Inside Rally

Its always great to see, when the Girls compete against the Boys in Motorsport. The WRC is a mostly male dominated sport. That said, Females in Rallying have also proven to be very successful. The most well known, being Michelle Mouton. But others have also enjoyed some top results and great success.

One of them this weekend on Wales Rally GB, was  the 2013 European Ladies Champion, Molly Taylor. The run in the final round of the world championship was a reward from her manager, Pier Liberali, of the Italian-based sports management company, United Business, for her achievement in the European Rally Championships.

It was tough work out on the stages, as Wales Rally GB played host to the final round of the World Rally Championships. The event is well known for its challenging conditions, and is tough for even the best drivers in the world, many of them not making it to the finish. Despite this, the Australian rally driver took to the stages, and over the 4 day event, finished the rally 4th in the two wheel drive class. And an impressive 23rd in the overall classification. She also won the prestigious and highly coveted Richard Burns Trophy.

Photo D:Darrall

She’s quoted on her website saying, “We’re really happy with what we achieved over the weekend, “ Taylor says. “It was a really tough event but we managed to keep going and posted some fast stage times in between the various issues we had, so we are taking away a lot of positives from the experience. “It was a great way to finish what has been a very challenging but ultimately very rewarding year, and I’m really grateful to Seb [co-driver Seb Marshall], Pier [Liberali] and the whole BP Racing team for having the chance to do it.”

Taylor had a tough start to the weekend. According to her website, there was frustration after the car she hired to do the reconnaissance of the stages to write the pace notes for the event, didn’t perform and needed some ‘bush mechanics’ to get it going. Then encountered further problems, saying, “We didn’t get a chance to do a pre-event test so it was a tricky start to the rally as we had a new car set-up that we weren’t used to for the wet conditions in GB. We only had a few runs at shakedown to find the set-up for the rally,” says Taylor, who ran the same Citroën DS3 R3T in United Business livery that she has driven throughout this year’s European Rally Championship series.

Talking on her website about the rally, she said, “We had some turbo issues on the three stages on Thursday night which were fixed at service, and then we had a lot of fun on the Friday morning. The stages were awesome and we were very happy with our times. “Friday afternoon was a bit more challenging because we had a problem with the throttle sensor. We couldn’t get full throttle on the fast sections and then the throttle was sticking on the low speed sections. The car had a mind of its own and it was scary on the steep downhill sections when the throttle kept sticking on.”

One of the last stages of the day on Saturday, was a section she and Marshall had missed during ‘recce’ with their car problems. They came into a corner too fast and rolled the car. But in fantastic fashion, as soon as the cars wheels touched back down, the power was on, and only lost a few seconds, despite the roll. “I tried to wash off as much speed as possible but clipped the inside of the corner and tipped the car on its roof,” Taylor says. “Luckily we did a complete roll and landed back on the wheels and we were able to keep going. We actually didn’t lose that much time”.

The final day was more of a struggle as the conditions and the surface was more slippery than they ha predicted, And wasn’t happy with their tyre choice, but made it to the end of the rally, wen others didn’t, and brought the car back home, 4th in her class “It wasn’t ideal but we were still happy with the day, and the whole weekend, really. Our goal was to be in the top five in our class, given the calibre of the field, and we achieved that. There were some really good stage times, a good result, and some really fantastic trophies to take home [co-driver Seb Marshall won the prestigious Michael Park Trophy*] so we are very happy!”

Below is the on-board video of Molly Taylors ‘Roll Recovery’ On Rally GB. Her lucky escape where she only lost a few seconds despite rolling the DS3 R3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juWZU7q9LfE

The final round of the WRC, Wales Rally GB Is said to have brought an estimated £10m boost to the North Wales economy.

Photo: D.Darrall

According to the Wales Daily Post – Llandudno was filled with around 10,000 people on Sunday to see Sebastien Ogier take the honours at the end of the four-day event. Andrew Coe, Chief executive of rally organisers IMS said: “We estimate that the event brought £10m to the economy of Flintshire, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Wrexham and Powys as well. We had different stages and there were benefits for petrol stations, restaurants as well as hotels and guest houses. Six hundred million people around the world will see pictures of places such as the Great Orme, Llandudno which have been on S4C. As many as a 100 million will see these pictures over the next few days.”

His colleague, Jonathan Gill, said: “We haven’t had some of the figures about car park attendances yet but in Deeside, for example, there were some 10,000 in the service park. School children were able to visit the Toyota factory on Deeside and see engine building as well as events on at Venue Cymru, Llandudno.

Tourism Partnership North Wales’ Dewi Davies said: “It brought people out of their homes here in North Wales and attracted thousands of visitors from over the border in England. “Anecdotally, there was a lot of traffic on the A55 last night as people made their way back home. All the 100 rooms at the St David’s Park, Ewloe were booked up by competitors. “There will be clips of the rally showing different parts of rural Wales now being shown all over the world which will get people asking about Wales. Many of the pictures will have Visit Wales hoardings.”

David Williams of the Ambassador Hotel, Llandudno, said: “It’s made a tremendous difference to the resort from a marketing point of view with top drivers and the world’s media taking part. It was good for the restaurants as well.”

St George’s Hotel’s Nathan Cousins said: “We picked up  a couple of teams but were a bit disappointed there were no support or organising teams here. They were staying in areas such as Deeside and Chester.”

The Daily post reports that, not everybody was happy with the rally’s organisation, with reports of major traffic jams around Chirk on Saturday, when the spectator car park was full. Ken Jones, who lives in Chirk said: “It took me an hour to go from Chirk to Ruabon it was blocked for miles in all directions.”

Mr Coe said: “We are going to carry out our own inquiry into why it didn’t work as effectively as we wanted it to. But we were genuinely surprised by the number that were trying to get to the venue and apologise for those people who didn’t get there. We are looking at alternatives such as a park and ride and a other car parks.”

Source: Wales Daily Post