Colin McRae the standings in either 1996 or 1997, on both occasions behind Finland and Mitsubishi Ralliart's Tommi Mäkinen. He helped Subaru complete their run of three consecutive manufacturers' titles during this time. In what would turn out to be his final season with the team, in 1998 he won three more rallies and placed third in the standings, as well as winning the Race of Champions in Gran Canaria, the Canary Islands. After several years of varying success, McRae switched to the M-Sport-run Ford factory team for 1999, driving the new Ford Focus rally car. The deal saw McRae earning six
Colin McRae Rally (video game) an early prototype build of the game, prompting the team to move into full development. Besides providing technical input on the game's handling, Colin McRae and his co-driver Nicky Grist voiced themselves in the game, with McRae himself serving as the Rally School instructor for the game's tutorial mode. The game also included an easter egg in the form of an alien abduction scene where the player's car is beamed upwards into a ship on certain special stages upon activating a cheat code, parodying the alleged abduction of Barney and Betty Hill by extraterrestrials in 1961. By late 2002, sales