All female Rally Academy team ready for Galway International Rally
The Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy will field an all-female team for the first time on this weekend’s Corrib Oil Galway International Rally. Local driver Aoife Raftery will make her tarmac debut in a newly acquired Peugeot 208 Rally on the opening round of the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship. She previously drove the new car on the Cork Motor Club Gravel Sprint in late December. The Craughwell-based driver has been a member of the Rally Academy for the last two seasons and as well as contesting Irish tarmac and gravel rallies, she has also competed extensively in Italy.
Her new co-driver for the 2023 season is Cork woman Grace O’Brien. Aoife worked with Northern Ireland’s Geraldine McBride last season but this is the first time the Rally Academy has created an all-female team Irish rally team. Grace is starting her third year as Rally Academy co-driver. Last year she guided Ryan Cauldwell to victory in the Rally 4 category in the Irish Tarmac Championship. That led to the crew getting an all-expenses-paid drive in the Spanish round of the World Rally Championship last October.
Grace will pass on her international experience to Aoife – the pair are planning to contest the Motorsport Ireland Junior Rally Series, beginning with the Killarney Forestry Rally on February 19. They worked together for the first time over the weekend when they completed one day’s recce for Galway.
“We are both under the same programme in the Rally Academy,” said Aoife.
“The recce went very smoothly, I write my own notes and we had a great understanding of each other very quickly. It will be typical Galway, slippery and mucky.”
Aoife and Grace are supported by local Peugeot dealer Kenny Galway, O’Neill O’Malley Architecture, Loughrea Auto Parts, Craughwell Tyres, Quinn’s Hardware, Western Insulation and Aertec.