Louise Aitken-Walker MBE

Louise learned to drive on her family’s farm in the Scottish Borders, and only tried motor sport after her brothers secretly entered her into Ford’s ’Find A Lady Driver’ competition in 1979, when she was just 19. Within two years she’d entered the Lombard RAC Rally and finished 19th, and she would go on to enjoy a 14-year career in the woods and on the track. In 1982 she scooped the Group One category in the National British Championship, and the Coupe des Dames in the Monte Carlo Rally a year later. She was signed to Peugeot in 1984, with whom she won the Ladies’ Trophy on the RAC and enjoyed a storming 1987 season, winning five out of five rounds with maximum points, and coming fourth overall. In saloon car racing in 1989, she finished first in her class at Silverstone and Thruxton and also then became the Ladies European Rally Champion – the first Brit since Pat Moss. Despite dicing with death when her Vauxhall Astra flipped into a lake in Portugal, she clinched the FIA Ladies World Championship, and received a slew of awards alongside our Segrave Trophy. In 1993 she decided to retire to start a family and has since developed a successful car dealership with her husband, fellow rally driver Graham Walker.