Young Guns Get Tilt At WRC Success In Ford Fiesta R2

SYDNEY – January 6, 2011: Two young Australian women are set to star on the international stage as they prepare for their debut in the World Rally Championship in March.

Sydneysider Molly Taylor, 22, and Rebecca Smart, 24, from the Queensland's Sunshine Coast, will partner in a Ford Fiesta R2 in six rounds of the 2011 championship.

Taylor was one of the standouts in the Pirelli Star Driver Scheme shoot-out in Spain in October, with 16 promising young drivers lining up for a chance to follow their dream of a career in the Formula One of gravel racing.

At stake were just six places in the FIA World Rally Championship Academy. Academy participants will drive identical specially prepared Ford Fiesta R2s.

The WRCA is a specially tailored training program and one-make rally sub-series aimed at developing young drivers and provide them with a passage through to the elite levels of the sport.

Taylor won one place and young Victorian driver, Brendan Reeves, won another.

Taylor's new co-driver, Smart was second outright last year in the Australian Rally Championship, as co-driver to her brother Ryan.

They also won the Kumho Tyres’ Future Champions Award. She will now partner Taylor in a hectic schedule that includes six rounds of the world championship and selected rounds of the British and European rally series.

“I am really excited to have Beck on board,” Taylor said.

Taylor started driving rally cars just five years ago after years of training as a cross-country event horse rider.

“It will be great to have an all-girl team, but more importantly Rebecca is just as determined as I am with the same ambitions," Taylor said.

"We are both committed to focus 100 per cent on this year in the WRC Academy. That is very important to me and why I am confident it will work well.

“From the little time we have spent in a car together things are very positive and I am looking forward to getting started on an event.

"We get along really well and have a lot in common so we have a good basis to work from.”

Smart is also happy about the new partnership.

“I’m really excited to be joining Molly in an all-girl team,” she said.

“I believe we are extremely compatible, and I’m looking forward to expanding my co-driving experience. The WRC Academy is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I’m definitely up for the challenge.”

Taylor heads back to the UK this weekend to start preparing for her first WRC round in Portugal in March.

Smart will follow in a month’s time, after packing up her job as a vet nurse and her life in Australia – leaving her brother to find someone else for the passenger seat for this year’s Australian series.

Taylor began rallying in 2005 and moved to the UK two years ago to be closer to the top levels of the sport with the aim of making a career as a professional driver.

She started posting solid results immediately, taking third in the British Citroën Racing Trophy (a one make sub-series of the British Rally Championship) with several round wins to her credit, as well as fourth outright in the British Junior Rally Championship.

Taylor was also named British Ladies Rally Champion in 2009 and 2010.

She competes with financial support from the Australian Motor Sport Foundation and several sponsors, as well as her income from her full-time job in customer sales for M-Sport, a specialist UK motor sport company which builds and runs rally cars for professional and privateer competitors.

Smart started watching rallying at the age of 12 with her brother before the pair launched into the sport in 2007 with a car they bought on eBay.

They started out in small local events in Queensland before stepping into progressively faster cars and national rally series.

The Ford Fiesta R2 is based on the production model Fiesta Zetec 1.6.

The M-Sport kit used to convert the car to rally specification includes engine parts to lift performance and sports suspension tuning.

The gearbox has also been replaced with a sequential five-speed gearbox mated to a limited-slip differential. The R2 also gets upgraded brakes and Reiger adjustable dampers and Eibach springs.

Beyond these specific items, M-Sport has used as many standard Ford components as possible in order to reduce costs for the competitor.