This is the Statt Mann Baby!!  Time to Scatt a little bit.

Colin McRae was someone I knew and laughed with several times even if the microphone wasn’t there.  It often wasn’t.

I met McRae New Year’s Eve 2004 in Barcelona.  One of the most respected drivers in my quiver came into my life throwing a chocolate mousse at me.

It was a food fight.  Grown men and women were cutting loose.  The hotel officials standing in the hallway were speechless.

Several months later I saw McRae again here in the States and he only smiled that smirk that revealed his Scottish personality when he saw me.

And that’s the point.  In writing that sentence I had to go back and change reveal to past tense.  McRae is gone, killed in a helicopter crash Saturday at his estate in Scotland.

His five year old son was by his side along with two other family friends.

When I met McRae we shared a laugh about the internationally best selling computer game that carries his name.  We shared stories about the people who knew the game but didn’t know that Colin McRae was a real person, a world champion.

We last talked at the X Games in August.  He told me he still sees a driver when he looks in the mirror.  He said it with that smirk of his.

That’s how I’ll remember him forever.

A driver… on the shortest list of THE drivers I’ve ever known.

Peace.