About

Welcome to Maxrally, which is not – as has been suggested by some – a tribute to the former President of the FIA, but instead a website that takes a slightly different (and we hope interesting) look at the world of rallying.

Like many people, all of us here were hugely influenced by the unstinting work of the legendary journalist David Williams. I’d like to be able to boast that he taught me everything I know, except that I could never hope to match his capacity for drinking beer, extracting the maximum possible top speed out of diminutive hire cars, and – last but not least – rolling out accurate, entertaining, and erudite copy, day-in, day out.

A number of years back, David founded worldrallynews, the original rallying news website. It was the place that everybody turned to for unbiased and up to date news: “all the spins without the spin” as the slogan put it. Sadly, along with David, World Rally News died back in 2005.

This website is a very different creature from worldrallynews.com but it has been conceived with much the same philosophy in mind. We aim to bring you entirely independent news from a wide variety of international series, written by top journalists. Alongside that, we are fortunate to feature regularly-updated photographs from McKlein from every era of the sport. Some of the images are iconic, a number of them are quirky, all of them are eye-catching and a few are even surreal. But art is not always about understanding…

The features section reflects this wide spread of passionate interests, and we will also be running a number of regular columns – all of which I promise will be more interesting and less self-congratulatory than this one. We’ll be introducing a few writers who you may not have read before, as well as wheeling out a number of old stagers. Plus we will be getting the views of the leading competitors themselves.

One thing we’re not going to have – at least for now – is live results, interactive web chats, pop-ups, downloadable ringtones, videos, webcams, reader surveys, the Crazy Frog, F1 engine noises and more forums than ancient Rome. These features just slow things down and other people do them – and then fix them when they crash – much better than us.

What we do is words and pictures. We hope you enjoy them.

Writers & Photographers

Anthony Peacock
Anthony Peacock started writing about motorsport in the mid-1990s and has been steadily gaining in both reputation and weight ever since. Having worked his way up the ladder at Autosport – “the world’s fastest magazine” for five happy years – he then moved over to become rallies editor at RallyXS: the official magazine of the World Rally Championship. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to The Guardian, The Independent, The Red Bulletin and FHM amongst others, and he is also the author of several short stories. In his spare time he enjoys cooking with wine and he lists Keith Floyd and James Hunt as his lifestyle gurus.

Anthony Rowlinson
Anthony Rowlinson looks like the love-child of Leo Sayer and Alain Prost, but sings worse than one and is much, much slower than the other. Still, he’s taller than both and has managed to find work writing about motorsport and editing magazines for the past ten years at Autosport, F1 Racing, The Red Bulletin and various national newspapers, so life isn't all bad (and certainly way better than the all-time career low of working as a showbiz reporter for The Daily Mail for a brief period in 1997 – WTF?) Formula 1 is where it's at for Anthony, but he’ll get very excited about anything fast, noisy and filled with petrol. He would like to be gifted a Lotus Elise. Offers to: Anthony.rowlinson@gmail.com

Charlie Contadeli
Charlie – who comes from Milan and Reading – has been a motorsport fan for all of her life, which is probably why she’s not settled down to a proper job yet. After studying archaeology, she worked as an agony aunt, waitress, estate agent, and on one memorable occasion, grid girl. She found the experience degrading and humiliating, so has vowed never to touch estate agency again.

Colin McMaster
Colin was born into a family passionate about motorsport. Pretty much the first piece of rally action he ever saw – as an eight-year-old – was an exuberant Jimmy McRae sliding off the road in his Vauxhall Chevette right opposite the place where the McMaster family were spectating. Another 15 years would pass before he saw a rally car driven in anger again and this time Colin was sat alongside another Colin, Jimmy’s son, doing an in-car photo shoot for Rothmans. Just like Kimi Raikkonen, Colin (McMaster) turned his back on a Formula 1 career for rallying. The rest is history.

Daniel Roeseler
Daniel took his first photos of rally cars aged 12. Admittedly, these were Tamiya model cars and the cameras belonged to his father. His passion for cars led to a job as a mechanic and even a spot of rally driving. Having discovered that he was not Sebastien Loeb, he became a journalist and translator in Munich. But then he decided that he was more suited to pictures rather than words, and worked hard on developing his snaps to a professional standard. Having followed the WRC since 1989 he is practically part of the furniture.

Reinhard Klein
Reinhard Klein is well-known as a Caravaggio of the stages, although some of his more surreal photos probably owe more to Picasso. His reputation is such that he needs no introduction, but what fewer people know is that he has a couple of historic rally cars himself – including an immaculate Metro 6R4 – that he drives as part of his famed “Slowly Sideways” historic rally group. They basically do what they say on the tin, but Reinhard even finds time to take some photos while he is driving it. Reinhard formed McKlein in partnership with Colin McMaster in 1997.

Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers has always been fascinated by fast moving cars. As a child his father would take him to watch British Formula Three races at tracks such as Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Thruxton. When he was old enough to drive he’d make his own way, but as he was also old enough to work by then, he was fortunate to be able to turn his passion into his job. After stints working in public relations and event management, Richard fulfilled a lifelong ambition by joining Motorsport News. He eventually became its rallies editor after a three-year stint reporting on every round of the World Rally Championship, before his switch to the Mediatica agency. When he’s not working on rallies Richard enjoys watching Sheffield Wednesday, listening to good music and eating and drinking too much.

Tony Welam
Tony is McKlein’s resident Swede, with an eye for unusual detail, an ability to secure some remarkable portrait shots, and the ability not to feel cold in temperatures that would make a polar bear freeze. He has collaborated with McKlein for several years and is a familiar sight by the side of the road on the world’s rally stages.