McRae won his first WRC rally in 1993, in the Prodrive-built Subaru Legacy in the Rally New Zealand, before helping Subaru to three consecutive constructors titles, including the Drivers championship in 1995, which was secured after the Rally of Great Britain, with team-mate and double world champion Carlos Sainz finishing second. He later also won the 1998 Race of Champions.

After several years of varying success, McRae switched to the M-Sport Ford team in 1999, driving the new Ford Focus rally car. This move was rewarded with two wins at the Safari Rally and Rally Portugal. Reliability for much of the season, resulted in sixth place overall, with only three points scoring finishes. In 2001 McRae finished second in the drivers championship two points behind Richard Burns.

With victory in the Safari Rally in 2002, McRae made the record books as a driver with most event wins in the World Rally Championship. This record has since been broken by Carlos Sainz, Sébastien Loeb and Marcus Grönholm.

In 2003, McRae signed for Citroën. The season ended with seventh in the drivers' championship. This resulted in McRae being replaced by Sainz in the Citroën factory team for the 2004 season. As Subaru chose Mikko Hirvonen to partner Petter Solberg, McRae found himself without a drive and pursued other interests including competing in the Paris Dakar Rally and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

McRae returned to the WRC for one off drives in the 2005 Rally GB and Rally Australia, finishing seventh and failing to finish due to a mechanical problem. On August 5, 2006, McRae competed for Subaru in the first live televised American rally in Los Angeles as part of the X-Games. McRae crashed on the penultimate corner damaging the front bumper and left front tyre, finishing second. McRae's final rally was the 2006 Rally Turkey in September, which ended with a mechanical failure. McRae replaced Sébastien Loeb who had been injured in a cycling accident prior to the race.

In August 2007, McRae said that he is working on finding a seat for the 2008 WRC season and stated that "if it doesn't happen next year, then I won't (return) because you can only be out of something at that level for so long."