ONE of Scotland's fastest rising young female rally drivers is bracing herself for her next big challenge after recording a Scottish Rally Championships placing in her first ever event.
Student Caroline Carslaw, 20, from Ayrshire, only started rally driving in November but is now limbering up for a second top flight national championship run after finishing second in class in the Borders counties rally last month.
She was one of only two women in the race and the only Scotswoman to take part out of 91 drivers.
Carslaw managed to impress the Knockhill driving test team so much with her skills last year that she passed her rally licence qualifications on her first attempt.
The third-year Strathclyde University student said studies for her masters in mechanical engineering helped prepare her for the male-dominated motoring world.
Carslaw, of Dunlop, said she is considering designing cars in future but is keeping both her engineering and rallying career options open.
She said: "To be honest, with the conditions being so bad I was really happy just to have finished all the stages of the rally unscathed. Coming second was an unexpected bonus."
Her navigator is Dr John Duke, an Ayrshire GP who contested British Championship events in the 1980s and 1990s.
Her father and current sponsor Donald Carslaw was also an amateur driver, and she is being coached by former Scottish champion and Vauxhall factory driver Andrew Wood, from Melrose. Her next event is the Granite City Rally in Aberdeen on April 20, covering 45 miles of Forestry Commission Scotland tracks around Aberdeenshire.
The rally will be only her second on gruelling forest roads.
She said: "I feel quite good about it after the Borders. The day before it I'm getting some help from Andrew Wood with my training."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article