Thirty years after she first joined forces with Canberra's Neal Bates in the Australian Rally Championship, Coral Taylor is stepping into the co-driver's seat again fulltime to partner with Neal's son and three-time title-winner Harry to fight out this year's season in the ACT-built Gazoo Racing Toyota Yaris.
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The 62-year-old Sydney mother of two, and now a grandmother, previously won four national championships as the co-driver with Neal Bates, with 34 round wins over three decades.
She "retired" from full-time competition - in a way - when Neal also hung his helmet to focus on building his business and support the burgeoning rally careers of his two talented sons Harry and Lewis.
She steps in now to replace Harry's regular co-driver, John McCarthy, who announced early this year he would retire from the sport's highest level to spend more time with his family.
However, the famous Bates-Taylor names have been on the side window of the country's fastest $400,000 turbocharged, all-wheel drive Toyota Yaris rally car before.
Early last year, as the ACT team was boarding the Spirit of Tasmania for the opening round of the Australian Rally Championship in Launceston, McCarthy called to say he had contracted COVID-19 and was under isolation.
In the scramble to find a late replacement, the logical solution was already with the team in a logistics and coordination role, with the hugely experienced Taylor - mother of 2016 national rally champion and former Subaru works driver Molly Taylor - taking a deep breath and jumping back in the co-driver's seat.
The sudden reshuffle was a faultless one, with the newly minted Bates-Taylor combination posting a strong win in Tasmania.
"I think if we hadn't done well in Tasmania last year the decision to co-drive for Harry this season would have been that much harder," Coral Taylor said.
"I'd forgotten, I guess, just how great it was to be back in the car again and the fact that it worked, and worked well, even at such short notice and while I was still trying to get my head around Harry's pace-noting system, erased that self-doubt that I could do this at the highest level again.
"I honestly feel quite humbled and grateful that the team would choose me for the role because we all know how quick Harry is and how fiercely competitive this season will be with Lewis [Bates, the 2022 national rally champion] in an identical car and so many other teams pushing that much harder.
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"But it also feels like a natural fit; in a way we are one big family and we all know each other so well.
"I feel like I'm back in my happy place."
The Taylor family is like Australia's rally royalty, with Coral's late father Norm Fritter a fierce competitor, her husband Mark also an accomplished driver and her daughter Molly a hugely respected and championship-winning driver in her own right, both in Australia and overseas.
Coral Taylor began her motorsport career at the age of 18, when she co-drove for her father in the 1979 Repco Round Australia Trial.
The first round of the Australian Rally Championship will be Rally Tasmania held on logging roads to the west of Launceston, from March 24-26.
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