We are excited to announce Australian and European ladies champion Molly Taylor will return to the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) for three gravel rounds in M-Sport’s new Rally3 car.
The WRC is the highest level of global competition in the motorsport discipline of rallying. Taylor’s WRC programme will begin with the superfast Rally Estonia (16-18 July 2021) before heading to the classic Acropolis Rally Greece (9-12 September 2021), which returns to the WRC calendar for the first time since 2013.
There will be a significant change in pace as she reverts to fast and smooth dirt roads for Rally Finland (1-3 October 2021).
Taylor will be reunited with Seb Marshall, who co-drove her to European success in 2013 in a Citroën DS3 R3T. Three years later she won the Australian title in a Subaru WRX.
Announcing her schedule on the championship’s WRC Backstories podcast, Taylor told presenter Becs Williams it was a ‘dream programme’.
“We’re getting the band back together. I’m really excited to have this opportunity and get back to some of my favourite WRC events in Finland, Estonia, and the Acropolis, which has always been on the bucket list,” she enthused.
“We’ve been working towards this programme for a while, so it seems like it’s been in the distance for so long.
“You don’t want to get too excited, because you’re always trying to put programmes together, and it’s often that nothing happens. Then it all started to come together, and it looked like it was finally happening. Now it’s coming around really soon, so it’s pretty surreal,” she said.
Taylor worked for current M-Sport team principal Richard Millener at the British’s company’s Dovenby Hall base from 2010 to 2013. Whilst there she drove a Fiesta R2 in the WRC Academy, the forerunner to the FIA Junior WRC.
The competition is an exciting occasion for Taylor who following two successful championship wins to date in the inaugural 2021 Extreme E series, will be behind the wheel of a Rally3 car in the WRC for the first time since that 2011 campaign. The all-wheel drive M-Sport Rally3 is a newcomer to the sport, becoming the first car in that category to be given the green light for international competition in March.
Rally3 sits in the midpoint of the FIA’s five-tier pyramid, with the intention of providing a stepping- stone for young drivers looking to learn the ropes of four-wheel drive rallying and move on from two- wheel drive. The category will form the basis of WRC3 in 2022.
“It’s exciting to be a part of the beginning of the category and I think, from everything that I see, it looks like a really good package, so I’m really excited to give it a go,” Taylor added.
“I always wanted to get back into the WRC. I feel like it’s been many years of trying to get to an opportunity like this – and after all the work I’ve put in going all the way back to 2012 – I’ll take it now!”
For more information or to organise an interview with Molly Taylor, please contact Maddie Kiel: maddie@thelifestylesuite.com