Molly Taylor’s blog

It was great to be back in the rally car again last weekend. We put the little green Fiesta in full tarmac spec for the Rally of the Midlands, which is a round of the British Asphalt Rally Championship. 

It was only about 145km of competitive stages, but it was a good event to get a handle on the car in that spec and to get a feel for the way it behaves on tarmac, because two of the next four WRC rounds (Germany and France) are tarmac rather than gravel. The aim was to use the event as a test, but as a bit of a bonus we finished first in class and 13th outright, so that was great.

It was a tricky event with a real mixture of stages, all set around army barracks and a vehicle test complex. The weather was also really changeable which made it a challenge. Sometimes we were on wets in the dry and slicks in the wet. Added to that, there were often hold-ups and lots of short stages, so sometimes we started on cold tyres without any real distance to warm them up. It was all good practice!

It was also the first time that my new co-driver, Seb Marshall, was calling for me. Seb co-drove for British driver Harry Hunt in a Ford Fiesta R2 last year and won the Rookie cup in the JWRC and 2WD honours for the IRC. Everything went really well with us as a team and I’m very happy.

Now I’m back at work at M-Sport this week, trying to get as much done as possible – and catching up on the washing and my tax returns at night! I’m off to Ireland this weekend to pack the service truck and drive it back to England, ready for Goodwood. Seb and I will be competing on the Forest Rally Stage at the Goodwood Festival of Speed which is on from July 1-3, so we need the service truck there. From here on in, life is going to get very very busy.

After Goodwood the rally car, service van and recce car will go on a freight ferry from England to Finland and we'll fly to Helsinki to meet it. Then we'll take another ferry across to Estonia for Rally Estonia on the weekend of July 16-17. From there it’s back to Finland again for the next WRC Academy round at the end of July.

So the quiet times have come to an end but it was so good to be back in the car again, and I just can’t wait to get out there and do some serious miles. But first, it’s off to Goodwood to see how many famous drivers I can spot! I promise to take lots of photos and put them up on the site.

Cheers,
Molly

Visit Molly Taylor's website to follow her progress.

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