Roscrea's Rocket Nicole Drought makes rally debut in Killarney

Roscrea racer Nicole Drought added another string to her bow at the weekend as she made her Rally debut at the popular Killarney Historic Rally - the Roscrea racer is Ireland's most famous female race-car driver.

Having successfully tested a 600 bhp McLaren GT3 car at Silverstone just a few weeks ago, Nicole Drought moved to the other end of the spectrum last weekend when she made her rally debut at the Killarney Historic Rally at the wheel of a Mini Cooper S. Driving the E Fox Engineers Mini Cooper S, Nicole, with her regular Endurance Trial navigator Aaron McElroy alongside, was on the pace from the off.

Despite the intercom failing on the way to the opening stage, meaning they had to use improvised hand signals on their first ever rally stage, the pair had caught and overtaken three other cars before service at the halfway point. With the intercom repaired, the Mini made great progress on the final three stages, with a delighted Nicole being first 1300cc car home and taking the D1 class win as well.

"I really enjoyed that. I grew up watching my Dad rallying and so it has always been on the list to do a rally. I said last week that I would celebrate if we managed to finish the rally, so to run so competitively was an added bonus”, Nicole told the Tribune.

“The intercom issue definitely held us back on the opening loop, second time round was much better- I'd have given anything for a third loop! The car never missed a beat all day and Aaron was fantastic on the notes- a big learning curve and great experience for both of us. I'd like to thank Craig Fox from E Fox Engineers Ltd and Brian Matthews from Patch Tyre Equipment for making this possible, and Leo Nulty Promotions for putting it all together, as well as my usual commercial partners too", Nicole said.