KEY POINTS:
Colin McRae is the third British rally driver to have died in the past two years.
In November 2005, four years to the day after winning the World Rally Championship, McRae's former Subaru team-mate Richard Burns died, aged 34, after having been in a coma as a result of a brain tumour.
His death was overshadowed by the death on the same day of the footballer George Best.
In November 2003, Burns was driving to the season-ending Wales Rally GB, still in the frame for the title, when he suffered a blackout in his car.
He withdrew from the event and was eventually diagnosed with an astrocytoma.
He had chemotherapy and radiotherapy and left hospital briefly in 2004 but, despite surgery in April 2005, he died later that year.
Two months before Burns' death - two years ago tomorrow - the co-driver Michael Park died during the Margam stage of the Wales Rally GB.
Park was driving with Markko Martin in a Peugeot 307 when the pair crashed into a tree.
McRae is also the second Scottish sportsman to have been killed in a helicopter accident in the last few years.
In July 2003, Steve Hislop, the British Superbikes champion of 1995 and 2002 who also won the Isle of Man TT 11 times, died in a crash in Roxburghshire.
- THE INDEPENDENT
