Katie Milner is well used to visiting circuit like Cadwell Park and winning races in cars like last year’s championship winning Citroen Saxo JSCC car. But in just over a couple of weeks time, she will be swapping her usual driving seat on the race track for a rally co-drivers seat.
She will be joining multiple rally champion dad Jonny in a Toyota Celica for the Cadwell Park stages rally on Sunday 9th April.
This event is part of the Motorsport News circuit Rally championship and it will be Katie’s rally debut but she couldn’t have picked a better person to be co driver for.
Dad Jonny started rallying in 1989 and had a brief diversion initially into rallycross where he won the 1990 Britsh title. He then concentrated on rallying full time and by 1992 he’d already won his first championship taking the Top Gear British Junior rally championship beating the highly rated Mark Higgins in the final round the take the title.
He had many wins over the next few years rallying various cars from Audis to Escort Cosworths before moving to Toyotas. By 2002 he took the British Championship in a Toyota Corolla, a feat he repeated the following year both times being run by his own team. He then had a short break from rallying before returning to win the national gravel rally championship in 2010.
He now returns to rallying once more teaming up with daughter Katie, the 2016 Junior Saloon car champion for the first time. Katie is already competing in the Gineta GT5 challenge this season which gets underway the following weekend at Oulton Park. But before then Katie and her dad decided they couldn’t miss the chance of competing together at a motorsport event.
Katie explains;
“There was aleady a team of two Fiats going run by Merlin international [The family team] and so we thought we’d go have some fun too in the Toyota Celica.”
Although the father and daughter team are only doing the event for fun, the competitive nature of the duo will ensure they will be pushing for a good result. It’s Katie’s co driving debut but with her success in Autograss and more recently circuit racing, she’ll want to add Rallying to the list of her achievements.
Katie and her dad have been preparing for the event already and with Katie learning fast and the car expertly prepared by Merlin International they should have an excellent chance at some rallying success. Katie has raced
If you’d like to go along to support Katie and her dad, tickets for the event are available on the Cadwell Park website.
http://www.cadwellpark.co.uk/calendar/2017/april/bmc-rally.aspx
The first car will start at just before 9am with the rally running on the various stages all day until the rally finishes at 6pm.
For Katie to find success on her debut might seem like a difficult task but with her competitive nature and her dad’s impressive rallying history you wouldn’t bet against the pair finding success at the one day event.
We’ll bring you coverage of how they got on in the rally on the site after the event. By Marc Waller
