Meet the world’s oldest rally star
The world’s oldest rally car navigator Dorothy Caldwell will race 5354km around New Zealand with her 73- year- old Kiwi son in the driving seat.
The 98- year- old from Flagstaff, in Hamilton, will travel in Alastair Caldwell’s 1963 Rolls- Royce Silver Cloud III for the duration of the 26- day Haka Classic event.
The race starts tomorrow in Auckland and finishes in Christchurch on November 25.
Dorothy took up navigating for her former McLaren Formula 1 team boss son on the world rally circuit in 2012. She is now officially in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest rally navigator.
“It is not something I aspired to do and I started this pretty late in life,” she said. “I don’t use GPS or any of the modern stuff to find my way about, I stick to having an old fashioned map in my lap.”
Dorothy lives in a retirement home. She recently renewed her driving licence so she could continue as a navigator.
The mother and son team have already completed two endurance rallies across the United States and another in Burma.
“I’m a good car sitter,” she said. “I love doing all the travelling but I will only go in the Rolls- Royce because anything else is too uncomfortable.”
She also packs plenty of packets of tea for the journeys.
“They don’t make proper tea in places like America so I like to take my own wherever I go.”
Dorothy moved here from the UK in 1950. She is a grandmother of five and has 10 great- grandchildren.
Of her three sons, Alastair is the youngest. Her eldest son Mike died of an illness a few years ago, and middle son Bill died as a young man in a race car crash.
Former Aucklander Alastair — who runs a successful storage company in England — used to be the boss of racing legends such as Nelson Piquet and James Hunt.
Three years ago he was an adviser to Hollywood film director Ron Howard for the hit movie Rush about the great racetrack rivalry between Hunt and Nikki Lauda.
Caldwell said his “amazing” mum has the perfect temperament for travelling with.
Dorothy said rallying has brought them closer together.
“We have never had a cross word on a rally,” she said. “It is a team effort and we work well together.”
But although Dorothy can’t wait for the Haka Classic to start, it is liable to be her last rally.
“I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of New Zealand I have never seen before,” she said.
“But I’m now nearly 100 so perhaps it is time to take things just a little bit easier.”