What drives Australian rally champion, Molly Taylor?
For someone who can rightfully claim to be one of Australia’s most successful motor racing exports, rally and off-road driver Molly Taylor is amazingly down to earth.
“I crashed in my first ever rally,” she laughs, “so I didn’t start as a prodigy at all!”
The road ever since, however, has been remarkable.
The youngest ever winner of the Australian Rally Championship (ARC), and still the only female to do so, Molly is also a World Rally Championship stage winner, a two-time Dakar competitor, and the only female driver in Sydney’s 2025 Race of Champions event which pitted the world’s best drivers, with surnames like Vettel, Loeb, Solberg and Schumacher, against each other in identical machinery.
Then there’s perhaps Molly’s biggest achievement: winning the 2021 Extreme E championship. Suddenly ‘prodigy’ is sounding like a fit descriptor…
Molly also has a link to the NRMA. Her mum Coral, who is a four-time ARC champion co-driver, was a long-serving member of the board. So how did Molly’s racing journey begin? And how does she feel about being a role model for young girls around the world? We caught up in her seaside home in Melbourne to find out.
What was it like growing up in a racing family?
I just thought it was normal! Mum would occasionally pick us up from school in a cool car but I didn’t really appreciate how unique she was or how much ground she was breaking in the industry.
I do remember we always went to the rally in Coffs Harbour but my biggest memory was the water slide in the hotel pool! It wasn’t until later that I realised the impact role models can have on young girls.
Did your parents encourage you to go racing or let you guide them?
Definitely the latter. I was exposed to motorsport obviously but I was actually obsessed with horses first. But then dad put me through his rally school when it was time to get my driving license and that was amazing because you're learning how to drive a manual and how to safely handle a car when it’s sliding around. After that I came home and was like “why didn’t we do this earlier!?”
Best part about being a racing driver?
The driving. If you can nail a corner and be on the edge of what a car can do, then that buzz is still the best part of it all.
How about the worst?
It’s the constant uncertainty. You're always trying to put together a program, you never really know what's going to happen the next year. So you don’t have any job security because there’s so many things out of your control. That is quite scary!
How do you handle pressure?
It’s something I've worked on a lot. Really it’s just practice and learning how to stay focused but working with good people is so important.
My teammate Kevin’s [Hansen] favourite quote is “pressure is for beer and turbos”. I‘ve learnt a lot from that.
Is enough being done to encourage girls to get into racing?
There's always more to do but I think Australia’s ‘girls on track’ program is held as a good benchmark. The amount of girls that go through that program, and not just from a driving perspective but for roles like engineering and management, is great.
The key, though, is having the visibility of females in the major categories. So when a kid turns on TV, they see women doing these roles. I really do think we’ll see a woman in Formula 1 one day!
Any advice for your younger self?
Not to care so much about what people think. As a young girl going into rallies you feel like everyone wants to see what the girl can do. And so you always feel like there's this weight and you have to prove yourself and go above and beyond to prove that you're legit.
How do you feel about being a role model?
If I look at the influence my mum had on me and how that helped my perception of what was possible, I do think it's important to try and pay it forward. And if my visibility helps other girls to have the confidence to give something a crack, then I think that’s pretty special. It makes me proud.
How important is proper driver training?
Everything the NRMA does with road safety is great and it’s also why I did the rally school when I was young.
Driving training is so important because it’s about understanding a car and knowing what happens when it goes wrong, so then you have nothing to prove on the road. Motorport isn't an enabler of reckless driving. It should be the opposite!
