With a Heat victory in Western Australia and now a round win in Canberra, Molly Taylor says that she’s not even thinking about an Australian Rally Championship title this early in the season despite having a decent points lead over Eli Evans.
“I’m just more relieved than anything,” said an elated Taylor at the finish line in Canberra.
The National Capital Rally produced one of the more edge-of-your-seat result sheets in years, with top drivers like Simon Evans retiring completely, younger brother Eli bouncing back from a Heat One retirement to win Heat Two, and the Citroen’s of Tony Sullens and Adrian Coppin holding outright positions only to succumb to dramas.
“My focus this rally has just been on getting every corner, of every stage right, and after that there is nothing more I can do, it’s up to the other guys,” explained Molly. “If I can remain focused on just what I’m doing that’s safer for me too, it allows me to drive within myself.”
So what of the Championship standings, after two rounds Molly holds a 17-point lead over Eli with Tony Sullens only 6 points further back in third. Is it to early to start thinking about Championship success?
“When I start to think about the Championship this early in the year, I actually send those thoughts away and try to focus on something else!”
Molly quickly added though that when the action heats up she is beginning to think about the Championship risk versus reward factor of chasing faster drivers.
“It was a difficult thing during Sunday’s stages, I didn’t want to get drawn into someone else’s battle. With Simon and Eli getting no points on Saturday, even if I had have finished second or third it still would have been good Championship points,” she said.
“Yesterday leading by almost 40 seconds, then all gone in service but fought our way back and just missed out in the end, that was a rollercoaster. Today we were just trying to keep our noses clean and stay out of trouble, so it was a bit up and down.”
With the demanding Canberra roads producing so much chopping and changing up and down the leaderboard Molly said she employed a strategy of just concentrating on herself.
“When you have no idea what is happening around you, with results changing every stage, yeah it can get inside your head and force you to make a mistake. So it got to a point where I just had to shut that out and focus on doing my own thing and thankfully it was enough in the end.”
Heading into the weekend’s event, even with the Heat victory in WA behind her, co-driver Bill Hayes said that he and Molly had spent a lot of time between rallies working out where they could improve further.
One area he felt Molly was struggling with was by being overly aggressive in slow corners. With that in mind they tested a calmer approach to low speed corners during testing, and while Molly said it felt slower the stopwatch definitely proved otherwise.
“Having Bill to help me with things like that has been so helpful. We made some good steps forward with the car. We knew on the very narrow, technical roads there was time to be gained by keeping a clean line. But it’s tricky when you’re always trying to find the limit of braking, trying to be on that very edge and not overcook the braking especially when the surface is changing all the time,” said Molly
“We’ve still got some work to do but this round was certainly a big step forward, and I certainly learnt a lot more this weekend about being precise and neat on those very technical roads. Every time I hop in the car I’m getting better, and I want to just keep getting better and better each rally.”
“Very happy to have one, but very conscious that there is still work to do,” added Australian rallying’s first female round winner.
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