A 62-year-old from Rothienorman has been crowned Scottish Rally Championship ladies’ champion – having only got behind the wheel in 2018.
Aileen Forrest, with husband John, 63, as navigator, only sealed her victory in the final race of the season at Carlisle, in a moment she admits hasn’t quite sunk in yet.
The north-east duo found themselves in a hotly-contested battle with the cars of Ashleigh Morris and Meghan O’Kane for the title.
Morris’ challenge ended when her Ford Fiesta R200 was damaged during the penultimate stage at Galloway Hills, meaning the Forrests – in their Mitsubishi Evo 8 – went to Carlisle as title frontrunners, and only had to see off the Fiesta of O’Kane for the championship.
Aileen said: “The margins were so fine, if I hadn’t finished, Meghan would’ve been ladies’ champion.
“There was so much pressure that day. I drove like a granny really, because I was just so frightened I’d go off or mess up somehow.
“All I wanted to do was get round and win the championship.
“But, coming to the end of the fourth stage, we saw Meghan’s car had blown up, and at that point John turned and said: ‘that’s you ladies’ champion’.”
Wrecked car meant mid-season replacement was needed
Although Aileen and John’s glory season ended with the customary champagne spray alongside their supporters, including their service team run by David Coutts, the March to October title run wasn’t a procession – with no shortage of adversity along the way.
They even, in typically high-octane rally style, “binned” their original Evo 9 at the close-at-hand Grampian Forest Rally in August.
Mother-of-two Aileen – who can now add rally champion to an impressive CV which already includes chief executive officer, mathematics and physics graduate, police special constable and helper for children with learning disabilities – said: “The girls and I had a great battle all year.
“I crashed my car at Grampian. It was just very, very slidey and I was trying to get quicker and quicker.
“It was the second time through this stage, the last one of day, and – a couple of miles from the end – there’s a notorious bridge with a 10-foot drop either side.
“There had been haybales on it, but another driver had pushed them into the river, so there was nothing there to save me.
“I was just coming round too quick, in very marbley and dry conditions, and the back end of my car went away from me and I just went down into the river.
“It wasn’t very pleasant, but you don’t get a chance to be scared before something happens.
“We were fine – the harnesses and roll cages for safety in the car do their job.
“My legs must have banged up against the steering column, because I was black and blue from my waist down.
“It was a mess, and I didn’t have a car so quickly had to find another one.”
Once they’d secured the replacement Evo 8, their misfortune continued, with Aileen adding: “The next rally I took it out on (Galloway Hills) the engine blew up, so luck was against me all the way.
“Ashleigh, who was my main opponent, was having as bad luck as I was having. She crashed, too.
“But that’s just rallying, and it came down to the last rally at Carlisle, and I made it!”
‘Before I could say I wouldn’t bother, my husband had bought a car for me’
Although she had had a life-long love of cars and driving – “being brought up on a farm, you drove when you were knee high to a grasshopper, and I went on to do my lorry test when the kids were little” – Aileen came to rallying late in life, aged 58.
John, himself a late-starter, took up navigating for a friend in 2014 and, watching on as part of the service crew, Aileen – a self-professed “tom-boy” who had often tuned in to motorsport on the telly, occasionally going to see track-racing – began to think about what it would be like to be behind the wheel of a rally car.
She explained: “I said to someone I’d love to have a go, and they asked: ‘Why don’t you?’ And I said: ‘Don’t be silly, I’m 58, why would I start now?’
“But conversations happened and I decided to go for it. Before I could say: ‘Ach no, I won’t bother’, my husband had bought a car for me.
“So I didn’t get a chance to back out!”
A lesson in the Highlands from British Rally Champion Matt Edwards followed, where she learned the “essential” hard-braking skills which rally drivers use to help corner during racing.
And, although Aileen flipped her car on its roof in her first ever rally, it turned out she did adore her new, more active role in the sport.
The wife-and-husband link-up, though, came after.
“I did my first rally at Speyside in 2018 with my friend Pauline Paterson, who was my navigator,” said Aileen.
“She ended not being able to sit in the navigator’s seat because she was always violently sick with the motion of it.
“But then my husband parted ways with John Wink and became my navigator in 2019.”
The spouses, who previously ran an engineering firm together before selling up and starting their current business manafacturing precision tools for the oil industry, work as well together in racing as they do in the other parts of their life.
Aileen says John is a “placid man with the patience of a saint” away from the car, although she reflects both of them were getting a bit more excitable as they neared the finish line of the Scottish Rally Championship season.
“As we were nearing the end of the championship this year, we were both getting a bit more fractious I’d say!” Aileen joked.
Aileen will receive her awards at a gala dinner in Glasgow in January, while she hopes her Evo 9 will be repaired in time to defend her national title in 2023.
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