Richard Burns was born in 1971 and grew up near Reading. He first drove on a rally school course as a boy, joined a local motor club as a teenager, and by 1993 was British champion in a Subaru. He was quieter and more calculating than his rival and friend Colin McRae, and that was how he won.
He drove for Mitsubishi and then Subaru in the world championship, winning his first world round on the Safari Rally in 1998. In 2001, at the wheel of a Subaru Impreza WRC, he took the world title at the Rally of Great Britain, on 25 November, the first Englishman to become world rally champion.
He moved to Peugeot for 2002 and was still among the favourites in 2003 when, on his way to the final rally of the season in November, he blacked out at the wheel while driving with his fellow driver Markko Märtin. He was diagnosed with an astrocytoma, a brain tumour, and never competed again.
Richard Burns died on 25 November 2005 — four years to the day after he had become world champion. He was thirty-four. He had won ten world championship rallies.
The foundation set up in his name supports people with serious brain injuries and illnesses. Because no freely licensed portrait of him exists, his card shows what he is remembered driving: the blue Impreza.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
The cars
Cars in the catalog he drove, won in, or that were named after him.
