Gillian Thornton chats to veteran motor-racer Rosemary Smith
Rosemary Smith has raced for Ireland in car rallies across the globe. Gillian Thornton finds out why she still loves motoring in her eighties.
TROPHIES come in all shapes and sizes, precious reminders of victories won, of teammates, competitions and camaraderie.
But few trophies are more meaningful than an old wheel hub welded with an incongruous piece of metal that adorns Rosemary Smith’s home just outside Dublin.
Mounted on a mahogany base, this bizarre piece of motoring memorabilia is one of her most treasured possessions.
Driving a Hillman Imp in an Alpine rally, Rosemary and her navigator were making great time when they suddenly lost a wheel on a steep mountain road.
Determined not to drop out of the race, Rosemary leapt from the vehicle and retrieved the wheel, before wondering how she was going to fix it back on.
“A farmer in a nearby field saw what had happened, said something in Italian, and walked off, only to come back with a welding torch and some pieces of metal,” Rosemary, who will be eighty-four this summer, recalls.
“We were so grateful. I didn’t know how long it would stay on, but it held, we made up time, and went on to win the class!”
Spend time with the irrepressible Rosemary and you soon find there are plenty more stories where this came from.
She began rallying in the 1960s, competing in high-profile events across the world, and she still competes in Historic Rallies whenever possible.
Not a bad record for a “tall dumb blonde with false eyelashes” who started out in the fashion business.
“My father always said that there were two things that everyone should be able to do – swim and drive a car.
“So he taught me to drive in a field when I was eleven.” Rosemary laughs.
“He’d turned down a scholarship to study medicine at Trinity because his heart was in cars. So he started a garage instead and did a bit of amateur racing.”
“When I was a teenager, you couldn’t get a licence until you were seventeen but there were no driving tests in Ireland. You just bought a licence.
“So I went along at sixteen and because I was tall and looked older, I got away with it and was able to start whizzing around in my mum’s Mini.”
Rosemary readily admits she wasn’t a bit academic.
“But I could make you a dress in a day!”
She studied dress design on leaving school at fifteen and opened a fashion boutique in Dublin, making clothes for clients, and – at 5ft 10in tall – even modelling them.
Then one day, a neighbouring shop owner invited her to go on a rally as her navigator.
“I was no good at navigating and she got very frustrated, so we swapped seats and I drove – that’s when I was hooked.
“I’d always loved speed, and rallying was so much more fun than racing round a boring circuit!”
Rosemary soon made her mark and began to race for the Rootes Group, winning the Ladies’ prize on the Circuit of Ireland Rally in 1964, and a year later, winning the Tulip Rally in Holland, the only woman ever to win the race.
“Rallying is one of the few sports where men and women compete on equal terms.
“Right from the outset, I was told we were all simply drivers.”
Rallying is an expensive sport and despite her mounting successes, Rosemary rarely received anything more than expenses from sponsors.
“Sometimes a bonus for winning, but most of us did it for the honour and glory, and out of sheer passion for the sport.”
She soon closed the boutique, travelling wherever her sponsors sent
her to compete in the sport’s most legendary events: the Monte Carlo Rally, the East African Safari Rally, the London to Mexico Rally.
After Rootes, she was to drive for British Leyland, Ford and Porsche.
But, despite her many successes, Rosemary and her navigator were always known as “The Birds”.
“We lived in a different age then and I’m so glad to see so many determined young women in the public eye today. I was always the ‘dumb blonde’, but I just ignored it.
“If you want to do something enough, you just put up with the comments.”
Rosemary’s feisty approach stood her in good stead through many a hairy moment.
She claims to have little mechanical knowledge, eternally grateful for the part played by the skilled back-up teams.
But when mechanical failure threatened to end her participation in the 1968 London to Sydney rally, she remembered what her father had taught her.
“He always said that if a car wouldn’t go forward, it would usually go in reverse, so I reversed fifty-three km up the Khyber Pass.
“It was a good thing I didn’t realise how far it was when we started off!”
Ask Rosemary what achievements have meant the most to her across the decades and she brushes them aside.
“All through my life, I’ve believed in looking forward to the next thing rather than back.
“And I’ve a terrible memory for dates which was a challenge when I was working on my book a few years ago.”
A long-time campaigner for young driver education, Rosemary has run a Driving School for more than 20 years, and helped many novice and nervous drivers.
Although recent social restrictions have stopped her from taking lessons, she is still actively involved with the next generation behind the wheel.
She’s also still pushing boundaries, and has completed 75 accredited National, European and World Championship rallies during her career.
But one of her greatest milestones occurred just four years ago at the age of seventy-nine when she became the oldest person to have driven a Formula 1 racing car.
An Ambassador for Renault in Ireland for many years, Rosemary was invited to the Paul Ricard circuit near Marseilles to take part in a promotional film.
“There were so many people there that I thought it must be an open day, but my old friend Alain Prost assured me that they were all there for me. I couldn’t believe it!”
Rosemary first took a test lap in a Renault Clio to familiarise herself with the circuit, then in a Formula Renault car.
“The gear change was different from anything I had driven before and suddenly I got nervous. Not of crashing, but of making a fool of myself.
“My lovely instructor, Tom, told me that Jeremy Clarkson kept on stalling and I really didn’t want to do that!”
And she didn’t.
Rosemary got away to a clean start, completed her lap and returned to tumultuous applause.
Her only regret is that the “Guinness Book of Records” wasn’t on hand to record it, because they didn’t believe that any seventy-nine-yearold driver, man or woman, could drive an F1 car.
There will be more achievements.
Rosemary still competes, and can’t wait for a new calendar of fixtures when sport gets back on its feet again.
Always looking to the future, that’s our
Rosemary!
Rosemary’s autobiography, “Driven”, is published by HarperCollins and is available in most
book shops.