Establishing the perfect relationship with a driver isn’t easy.
After all, there are plenty of co-drivers who can all do the job well. What drivers will look for is someone who has a USP, but also most importantly somebody they have the right chemistry with.
As one burgeoning co-driver puts it: “We’re not designed to get on with every single person we meet. And it’s a long week if you don’t get on with the person!”
That burgeoning co-driver is Hannah McKillop. And she’s more than qualified to weigh in on the topic, given her 2025 calendar features a schedule with not one rally driver and program, but two.
This year, she’ll partner DirtFish Women in Motorsport Driver Aoife Raftery in the European Rally Championship and select American Rally Association events, as well as linking up with Garry Pearson at M-Sport for a British Rally Championship assault.
In total that’s 16 events in three different cars, three different continents and with two different drivers.
Intense? Of course. But her raison d’être? Absolutely.
“This is like literally everything I dreamed of, it’s everything that I wanted,” McKillop smiles.
“It’s very cool and I’m very, very, very grateful. But I also have made a lot of sacrifices in my personal life. Nothing good comes easy.”
Passion for the job
Daughter of a renowned mechanic, Hannah fell in love with cars straight away. As a youngster she explored creative passions like music, drama, and ballet: “But I’d come home from ballet and go out to the garage,” she laughs.
She’d always harbored a desire to get in a rally car and compete, but was “too scared of letting someone down and being terrible”. That was until her now husband, Josh (who is also a co-driver), offered her the words of encouragement she needed and her stage rallying career began a week before her 20th birthday.
Her big break came in 2021 when Josh couldn’t make the Ojibwe Forests Rally alongside Tom Williams in his Ford Fiesta Rally2, and from there her career has snowballed.
McKillop made her WRC debut at last year's Monte Carlo Rally
Last season was particularly transformational as she jumped in with Chris Ingram for the Monte Carlo Rally – her first WRC start – teamed up with Raftery in the ERC and continued to work behind-the-scenes with Pearson and his then co-driver Dan Barritt before getting the call up to hop in the car full-time for 2025.
“I’m very realistic in that I’ll probably not do it forever, and I’ll probably not do it at the level I’m at forever. So everything kind of has to be savoured,” McKillop says.
“But I’m very like that in my life anyway: I try to take every single moment when I can and actually be in the moment. Sometimes that’s hard and sometimes I get to the end of an event and I’m like, ‘Aw man, come on, you could have enjoyed that a bit more and been in the moment a bit more’.
“But sometimes external things happen and you just lose that bit of perspective. But I try really hard to maintain that when I can.”
She is more than aware of what she is achieving though. This week, she’s off to Spain for the opening round of the ERC, Rally Sierra Morena, having just ticked off her 100th ever rally – an event she won overall by a single second in a final stage shoot-out.
“I deliberately kept it quiet that I was reaching the 100 milestone because I wanted to see how the event went first, but it was perfect,” McKillop beams.
“I’ve done so much in the last three years in particular, but I’m hungry for so much more.”
Victory at the Malcolm Wilson Rally in early March was a sweet milestone on McKillop's 100th rally start
How she manages two different drivers
It’s abundantly clear Hananh is passionate about what she does – and very good at it too; otherwise both Pearson and Raftery wouldn’t be keen on her services.
But that does make her job more complicated than sitting with just one driver. She’s got two programs to fit into her schedule, two teams to be embedded in and – perhaps most importantly – two personalities to understand and gel with.
“Pacenotes and getting them on time is obviously a key part of the job, but there’s so much more to co-driving outside of that,” she says.
“You’ve got to be able to read your driver – work out how they are and understand how to pick them up when they need picking up, and then leveling them out when they need to be leveled out. That comes from sitting with someone for a long time.
“Like I know when I sit with Aoife, if something goes wrong her next stage will be one of her best stages of the rally because she gets fired up. So my job is to learn how to ignite that in her on every stage.”
Books and time cards are the backbone of a co-driver's job - but so is reading the driver they're sat with
So while McKillop’s job is the same with both Pearson and Raftery – help them get from A to B as quickly and stress-free as possible – how she goes about that is different with each driver.
“It’s a really interesting part of my job,” she admits. “It’s nice because you get to know people on such a personal level and you get to know their character traits and what they like, what they don’t like and what annoys them.
“But it’s something you have to be quite conscious of moving between drivers. And it’s a part that I really do enjoy and I think it should be effortless for any good co-driver to kind of pick that up.
“You have to be quite perceptive in picking it all up whenever you first meet someone. And also as they grow, accepting and learning what they’re changing and how that may alter your workload.
“I try to read people quite quickly because that lets me do my job better.”
Is it a help or a hindrance?
McKillop admits being fully committed to two drivers “can be difficult at times” – citing calendar clashes as an example.
This year, she has to miss two rallies with Raftery because they are on the same weekend as a British championship round that Pearson is entering – and Pearson is her priority in that regard because he asked first.
Keeping both drivers happy, and giving them 100% of her, is McKillop's challenge this year
“There’s some times this year where I’m going back-to-back on events as well,” McKillop adds, “and if it’s not organized correctly, someone would lose out on a part of my time.
“But it’s just forward planning and making sure that everyone’s getting an equal share of me when they need it. And also setting that expectation at the start of the year that yeah, I’m committed to you, but I’m also doing this and having them both understand that. I’m very lucky that they both do.”
The positives however far outstrip the negatives.
McKillop says: “Being in a seat every other weekend keeps you sharp, you learn on every event. You also learn working with different people, you learn different things, you pick up different things. So yeah, it’s definitely an advantage [to be with two different drivers] and I think it’s really important to do that.”
The drivers can benefit too.
“There’s stuff that I would have learned out in Europe that I can bring to Garry competing at the highest level in the UK, and similarly I’ve got experience in a Rally2 car in a team as professional as M-Sport that I can pass on to Aoife,” McKillop adds.
But above all McKillop feels “lucky” to not only have two great programs, but to be competing alongside two great friends.
Hannah feels both of her drivers can benefit from her experiences with the other
“Aoife is one of my really close friends. I’ve only known her just over a year but we just get on so well. I love her to bits, we have such a laugh,” she smiles.
“I haven’t seen her for a few months, but we chat all the time. And I know that the next time we see each other in person, within half an hour of meeting we will be in tears laughing at something… in fact, she has just texted me!’
“I feel really lucky I get to compete with her. And then I get to compete with Garry, who I’ve worked with for the past three or four years. Equally, Garry has become a really good friend of mine. I really admire the way he works and how he goes about his rallying. It’s very different to most drivers. And we just, again, have a laugh.
“You know you have to enjoy it because otherwise there’s no point in doing it. And if I could pick two people to compete with, they’re the two people that I would pick. So I feel really, really lucky.
“Having said that, I hope this isn’t the top,” she says. “I hope that there’s more to come in whatever form that may be, whether it’s co-driving or in a team or whatever. Because I work in motorsport as well – I’m an events manager and enjoy the team logistics and all that side of stuff, so I hope it’s something I’m always involved in.
“But to every single person along the way who has got me to where I am now, I’m so, so grateful for it. I never take it for granted.”
