8 April 2026 / By DAVID FERGUSON
THE business end of motorsport is often a stressful place, but for a 30-year-old seafood salesman with his eyes on world competition the fun and enjoyment is only just beginning.
While the spotlight has fallen on Max McRae in recent weeks, as the latest in Scotland’s unique rallying family steps up to the next level, Ayrshireman Cameron Fair is enjoying going along quietly in the seat beside the 21-year-old.
Sitting quietly is not quite how we’d put it come rally time, but as anyone who knows rallying will tell you it takes two to keep a car on the road at speed and be successful, and having a chilled co-driver is key.
Cameron is back working on the Isle of Mull when we catch up, the memory of his and Max’s victory at the North Wales Rally last month as fresh still as the latest batch of scallops, crab, mussels and fish for the tacos coming from boats 30 yards away in Tobermory harbour, and which will shortly be served in the Fisherman’s Pier Seafood van which he and fiancée Ruth own.
Scottish rallying and its dynastic developments
Just as fresh, I discover, as we look back on Cameron’s journey from enthusiastic nine-year-old experiencing his first rally car ride to European winner, are the crashes, hospital stays, closeness of fatal accidents and rolls.
“It’s all there, plenty of experience and learning,” says Cameron, “good and bad. But all that adventure has brought me and Max to where we are now – and we are very focused now on the British Championship this season and, if everything aligns, the World Rally Championship next season.”
Max came into the sport on petrol fumes as his father Alister, late uncle Colin and grandfather Jimmy, all British champions and Colin, of course, a World Rally champion, so his progress is a tale being well told. But Cameron also owes his rallying career to his father.
His dad, Russell, grew up in East Ayrshire and would become a good navigator, competing in Scottish championships through the 1980s and 1990s, and as a driver in sprints and hill climbs in the 2000s.
The chairman of the East Ayrshire Car Club and one of Motorsport UK’s regional committee members, these days he can be found organising events, managing the Kames track at Muirkirk and marshalling when required. And, just as with the McRaes and other ‘dynasties’ in motorsport, that love was passed on.
Curiosity on bus route sparked Fair family rallying interest
“My dad grew up in an era when rallying and rallycross were always on the TV, and he loved motorsport,” Cameron explains. “He told me how he used to pass this house on his bus route to Uni in Glasgow that had a Mark 2 Escort rally car sat outside. His mother encouraged him to go and ask the chap about it, and he met Alistair Smith and before you know it was working in his service team.
“Alistair’s co-driver couldn’t make one event and my dad sat in, and loved it, and then Alistair’s co-driver stopped and my dad took it on. He navigated until about 1998-99, when I came along, followed by my wee brother, so he took a back seat then.
“He never pushed me to rallying, but when I showed an interest he would take time to explain to me what rallying was about; how the stages worked, how driver and navigator worked together, that sort of thing.
“He is very much of the mindset that you only get back what you put in, and so that has stuck with me really, and is probably why I’m meticulous in everything I do.
“The first time I remember sitting in a rally car was when he was marshalling at Glentrool in Galloway Forest. I was maybe nine years old or something, and I couldn’t see over the dashboard, but I had a helmet, which was too big and rolled all over the place, and was strapped in, and just remember the noise of the stones hitting the underside of the car, the engine revving and the car moving around as we went for a spin.”
East Ayrshire provides launchpad for the love affair
There was no coming back from that. At 16, Cameron started competing with East Ayrshire Car Club, he and a friend borrowing a Vauxhall Nova, suits and helmets, splitting the £110 entry, and hoping the 25 litres of fuel they’d bought with the remainder of the budget would get them round.
“It started to move up a level when an onboard was posted on YouTube and my dad got an email from Dave Weston, which said that what I was doing was really good and I should be navigating at a higher level.
“Then, in 2017, Jock Armstrong called me and asked if I could do a rally with him, and that was huge – I grew up watching Jock rallying and he’d won the Scottish Championship in the previous two seasons. It was the Galloway Hills Rally, where I first spectated, and we went out and won it in his Subaru. But then Jock was banned for six months for a prank when he was marshalling that didn’t go down well with the motorsport authorities!”
Cameron duly headed south of the border and guided Sam Bilham to the Fiesta ST Trophy in 2017. He would achieve his dream of winning the Scottish Rally Championship, or at least sharing the co-drivers’ title with Clare Mole, in 2022, while partnering Armstrong and sitting in for eventual champion David Bogie for a crucial victory in Argyll.
Time for family and taking a step back, or …?
The birth of daughter Nora in 2019 and son Zander in 2023 had brought different priorities to the family Fair, and at that point he was thinking of taking some time out of the sport.
“I didn’t plan to rally at all in 2023 because we had our hands full with Nora and Zander,” he recalls, “but then I got this call out of nowhere from Irish driver Jon Armstrong, asking if I could do a rally in Gran Canaria.
“Not long before that the sport had lost Craig Breen, a WRC driver I once met and really liked watching. He was killed in an accident, just 33, which really shocked me. But it made me realise that life was short, that you can’t have regrets.
“So, when that call came asking if I could compete with Jon in the Junior European Championship, in M-Sport Poland’s new Fiesta R3 car, Ruth and I knew it was a huge opportunity, and she said ‘go for it’.”
Cameron admits he was like a kid in a toyshop as one European rally became two, became three, and then five – four class wins, and the Canaries, Poland, Latvia, Italy, and Czech Republic ticked off the world map. It did not all go according to plan, however, as their adventure came to an abrupt halt in the Czech Republic when they hit a tree at 130km/h with the roof of the car.
‘Roof looked like an elephant had sat on it!’
“The roof looked like an elephant had sat on it,” he recalls, “and I still wonder how we got out. Jon was unconscious for a few minutes, which was scary, and we had a lot of heavy bruising, so we were taken to hospital, but no broken bones, thankfully. The car’s safety equipment did its job!”
Despite that partnership pausing, M-Sport Poland’s MD Maceij Woda had seen enough in the Scot to invite him to join the FIA Rally Star programme, to find a driver from each continent with no rally experience and turn them into a world champion.
After two accidents in his first two events, South African motocross star Max Smart was paired up with Cameron and they did well enough to then be launched into the junior WRC in 2024. The Fair passport got a lot of action and the co-driver valuable experience, and, while there were no champagne sprays, Fair’s progress was watched closely by another Scot.
“The junior WRC was really good, but I’d got a call from Alister McRae asking if I would sit with Max for a rally at the tail end of 2023. I’d become good friends with Max’s co-driver Mac Kierans during the Europeans, and Alister then asked if I would do the Junior European and selected British rounds with Max in 2024. Obviously, being Scottish, the McRaes were heroes growing up so when they start calling you it’s quite easy to say ‘yes’.
Full throttle in both ERC and WRC campaigns
“But, from planning to take a step back in 2023, suddenly I found myself doing the junior WRC with Max Smart and the junior ERC with Max McRae the next year!”
That meant a marathon 17 rallies in 2024 and yielded fine finishes of seventh in the Junior WRC and third in the European version, with podiums claimed in both, and junior victories in Hungary and Wales.
Sport very rarely follows a straight line of improvement and after that promising year Fair and McRae ran into all sorts of trouble in 2025 from mechanical to illness, and even disappearing off the side of a cliff! Fortunately, they landed against a tree, but the team management were far from happy.
The bright notes came when they took part in the McRae Rally Challenge in September at Knockhill in a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 from the ever-reliable Dom Buckley RSC, and duly won the short event by 30 seconds, and followed up with a first BRC win in October, in the same car in the Cambrian Rally.
Skoda and Pirelli provide confidence for 2026
After that, the pair were eager to get going into 2026, and unsurprisingly chose to go with Buckley’s Skoda and Pirelli tyres once again.
“It’s such a good car round the world, and Pirelli is just a tyre that always works,” says Cameron. “The performance window of the Skoda is big, and so is the Pirelli. Rallying is about overall performance, not little peaks, and we’re finding the Skoda and Pirelli have the edge there.”
After winning their first run-out at the North Wales Rally, pipping Meirion Evans and Dale Furniss by 2.3 seconds – Max following dad Alister, uncle Colin and granddad Jimmy (pictured, above) to the trophy – the duo launch their British Rally Championship campaign at the Severn Valley Stages this weekend. It is shaping up to be a cracking battle with McRae and Fair seeded between the Toyotas of Osian Pryce and James Morgan, and Evans and Furniss, at the top of the field.
The duo are also considering some WRC events and, after Max attended the recent launch of the new WRC Scotland event in Aberdeen, there is much excitement at the prospect of the WRC coming to their home country.
“For me, that’s the biggest thing that has happened for British rallying for a long time,” adds Cameron, unable to hide his delight.
“For the world’s best rallying drivers and teams to come to Scotland is the stuff of dreams. I was too young to compete when the last international rally was held in Scotland but the idea that we could be there on the start line, mixing it with the best, has the hair on the back of the neck standing up.”
‘Still just that passionate kid in a rally car’
He is quick to add, however: “It’s a great dream, and I hope we get there, but I don’t think far ahead. For me, nothing has changed.
“I am doing the sport I love, with the benefit of it being your job, which is pretty special. But I’m still that passionate kid getting the chance to be in a rally car – only now I can see over the dashboard!
“I met Ruth at a rally, the kids are getting to an age where they understand what’s going on, and have had fun taking a trophy into school, and I know my mum and dad are proud, so we’re all involved and I just want to repay them for the support and patience they’ve shown me.
“If we do well in the BRC this year, hopefully, we can get the power and the force of the British public and sponsors behind us, and with that I know we can go to the highest level and compete around the world. That’s a pretty cool thing to think about.”
