Lyssia Baudet, Suvi Jyrkiäinen and Claire Schönborn will all contest this week’s Central European Rally behind the wheel of Ford Fiesta Rally3s with just one target in mind: a full season in the 2025 Junior WRC.
Having been chosen as the three most promising of a talented 15-strong lineup at last month’s three-day evaluation at M-Sport Poland’s base in Kraków, the Belgian, Finn and German are just one step away from a career-defining opportunity.
No pressure, then.
Here’s what you need to know about this week’s final audition of the Beyond Rally Women’s Driver Development Program:
How will a winner be decided?
Unlike in Poland where each finalist was presented with a number of tests and challenges including media aptitude, mechanical knowledge and of course driving skill, this week they will be competing in an actual round of the World Rally Championship.
That gives judges an even more accurate read of how they each deal with actual rally-relevant scenarios, but also increases the pressure on the three drivers.
They will all be competing against one another against the very same clock, but handily there are 10 other drivers in the Rally3 class at CER giving them plenty of useful benchmarks.
However the highest-placed driver is not necessarily the one who will be awarded the Junior WRC drive for 2025.
Baudet, Jyrkiäinen and Schönborn will need to impress the same panel of judges as in Poland (Pernilla Solberg, Burcu Çetinkaya, Isolde Holderied, Maciej Woda and Peter Thul) plus WRC event director Simon Larkin, with the winner announced on Sunday evening after the conclusion of CER.
How have they prepared?
All three finalists got their first proper taste of the Fiesta Rally3 – the car they’ll drive this weekend and next season too if successful – at last month’s training camp.
But they also enjoyed useful seat time behind the wheel yesterday (Monday) at the official pre-event test for Central European Rally.
It proved a very relevant test, as the morning was dry and the afternoon wet – so each driver got to experience a full range of conditions.
Schönborn banked even more experience beforehand though, contesting the Herbst Rally in Austria on roads similar to what she’ll face in CER, in the very same car she’ll drive.
Given the tri-nation event also visits her home country of Germany, could that give her a decisive edge?
Who are the finalists?
Lyssia Baudet (21) from Belgium began her career on circuits before moving to the special stages in 2022.
Most of her rallying has been done in low-spec front-wheel-drive machinery, campaigning a Renault Clio Rally5 in the Clio Trophy Belgium before moving up to the ADAC Open e-Rally Cup this year alongside more Clio outings.
Suvi Jyrkiäinen (24) from Finland also began circuit racing before she strapped herself into a rally car in the Finnish championship.
She’s tackled the Finnish Ladies Cup behind the wheel of her front-wheel-drive Ford Fiesta 1.6 but has recruited the experienced Antti Linnaketo to navigate for her in CER.
Claire Schönborn (25) from Germany is the oldest finalist but also the least experienced in terms of stage rally mileage – having started on slaloms and hillclimbs.
She has turned to the ADAC Opel e-Rally Cup this year and actually competed against Baudet at August’s Rallye Stemweder Berg, finishing one place behind.
However as mentioned above, she’s up on competitive Rally3 mileage having taken on Herbst Rally at the weekend.
