You’ve surely had this dream when you were young: walking onto hallowed ground for the first time, about to take part in an epic sporting event for the very first time.
Maybe you dreamed of striding onto the pitch, ball in hand, at Wembley or the Maracanã. Perhaps bowling the first over at Lord’s or the MCG, dunking a basket during an NBA game at Madison Square Garden or Staples Center. But the reality is dream-busting: only the world’s greatest professionals get to experience it.
Not in rallying. That’s the magic of our world. You don’t have to be a full-time professional at the absolute leading edge of the sport to walk in those shoes. Hobbyists gets to experience a slice of that magic.
Nothing makes you feel like you’ve arrived on rallying’s biggest stage quite like driving over the start ramp of the Monte Carlo Rally. The iconic Casino to the right, the Cafe de Paris directly ahead and in the remainder of Casino Square, a sea of fans. And unlike most team sports, for a few seconds the world’s biggest stage is fully your own – even if you’re not one of the professionals.
It’s an emotionally overwhelming experience – especially when you’ve spent 20 years competing as an amateur and finally get the chance to experience one of rallying’s most magical moments. For one weekend, Serena Giuliano got to stand in the same place and compete on the same roads as Sébastien Ogier, Thierry Neuville and co.
“It was so exciting, so much emotion,” says Giuliano, who by day is a biomedical research assistant but has co-driven regularly since the 2000s. “Especially at the beginning, crossing the start ramp. I was so excited: everyone that knows me was saying, ‘Don’t stress,’ but it was impossible!”
With enough money in your back pocket, buying your way onto that start line is an easy shortcut. But we’re not all so fortunate. Some of us are here for the love of the sport but may never be so lucky as to take on rallying’s most famous arenas.
Starting this year's Monte was a realization of 20 years' hard work
That feeling you get crossing the Monte start ramp is why we’re part of this sport. Giuliano’s story is an important reminder that it’s not out of reach for the ordinary rally fan.
Giuliano was born into rallying. Her father was part-time driver, full-time mechanic; from the moment she was old enough to see over a car’s dashboard, she was sat in the co-driver’s seat. Every Sunday morning, when her father would recce the stage of the short sprint events he’d compete in, she’d be in the passenger seat – from as young as three years old.
“It was something that was really part of my life. It was obvious I would end up doing this!
“In the beginning I wanted to drive, to be a pilot. But my father pointed out I had to start with co-driving – we didn’t have the money to have a car to compete. But I had friends asking me if I wanted to co-drive. I realized in the end that co-driving suited me better anyway: I’m a person that likes to manage and coordinate. I’m not so good at listening to others telling me what and how to do it!”
When not busy in a laboratory working with mass spectrometry, she’s spent much of her free time co-driving on Italian national rally events. These days you’ll see her in the French Historic cup, in the navigator’s seat of a Mk1 Ford Escort – she became class champion in 2023. But one phone call suddenly made the dream of taking on the WRC’s most famous event a reality.
Serena got started early in the world of motorsport
Marc Dessi, set to line up in a Peugeot 208 Rally4 for the Monte, was without his regular co-driver. Mattia Pastorino needed to find a replacement – and his first port of call was Giuliano.
“It was so exciting when I realized I could participate in the Monte,” said Giuliano. “For me, my home rally is Sanremo but Monte Carlo isn’t so far. So we consider it our second home rally as we’re nearby and we know the roads well. It was Mattia who gave my name to the pilot and it was so exciting, so much emotion.”
That recommendation wasn’t a favor – it was earned from two decades of diligent work. And it was an opportunity to go one better than the last time she’d crossed a major milestone: Sanremo 2009. For an Italian rally fan, Sanremo is as big as it gets without heading for foreign shores.
“My second Sanremo, I was with Federica Lio,” Giuliano explained. “It was our first race together and it was Sanremo! And the car was really small compared to the others, a Fiat Seicento – that year Sanremo was in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
“When we did the famous 44-kilometer stage, Cuori, it was something that gave me strong emotions. We looked at the time and OK, we were last but it was a good time for such a small car driven by two amateur drivers in our first race together.
“In the end we did the calculation though if you look at the stage time, it’s a lot. But when you consider the difference in the car, that they were professional drivers and you’re not, it was a good time for us.”
It can be hard to stare at the timing boards and see yourself down towards the bottom, even if you’ve maximized the equipment available to hand. Getting encouragement from elsewhere in the service park kept the Lio–Giuliano partnership going – especially from Maurizio Barone, the highly-experienced navigator who’s sat alongside some of Italy and San Marino’s higher-profile drivers like Mirco Baldacci, Luca Betti and Marco Signor.
“Barone wrote about us on social media afterwards,” explained Giuliano. “‘Two girls, Federica Lio and Serena Giuliano, an ‘old’ Fiat 600 Sporting A0. Ultra-passionate, a budget that can’t even be called such, they race when and how they can with a very used car. But the times speak very clearly: they have defeated a competition with very different means and ideas. Congratulations and maximum respect for you champions! Your time on the 45km stage and the gap to the front is a feat to remember.’
“Getting that feedback was a big moment for us as a team as it was the beginning of a long partnership, a strong team and friendship. And we were an all-female team.”
Knowing you’re stood on the world’s biggest stage can be overwhelming. For a moment, as Giuliano stood in the middle of Casino Square, the center of attention alongside Dessi, the emotion was strong.
But the 20 years of experience kicked in again. The opportunity was immense – but it the end, it’s still a rally like any other.
“I realized almost immediately after passing the start, a few meters after departing,” said Giuliano, “it was like normal again. The road book is the same, I have to do the same tasks in the same way. OK, it’s not like all the other rallies as there are some areas you need to pay a little more attention but during the race, you’re so concentrated on what you have to do that mid-rally, it’s almost like any other event.”
Giuliano's first event as a competitor, 2004 Rally Valle Versa in an Opel Corsa GSi
And in a sense, it was like any other event for Giuliano. She’d done lots of the stages previously: between events like Rallye d’Antibes Côte d’Azur and Rallye de la Vésubie, she’d traversed Monte’s fearsome roads plenty. It wasn’t all business as usual, however: after a lifetime reading pacenotes in Italian, she’d had to switch to French for the first time in her career, on the biggest week of her rally career. Fluency in the language will only get you so far – remembering to stay in the right language with similar pacenotes but with different pronunciations, while flying through the Turini, is a big ask.
But after reaching the stage end, it finally sunk in. Rallying was not her profession, yet she’d just completed the rally that’s on every competitor’s bucket list.
“It’s true that I already did this stage many times as I’ve done rallies here in the region, so it’s normal for us to do the Turini,” said Giuliano. “But the moment I finished the Turini and I gave my time card at the end, it was like: OK, I’ve finished my first Monte Carlo. At that moment, I cried a lot.”
Only an hour earlier, the world had been focused on Elfyn Evans sliding sideways and clipping a rockface, battling Ogier for tenths of a second for powerstage supremacy. The cameras were pointed elsewhere by the time car number 74 rolled into the village of Peïra-Cava. Giuliano’s emotion wasn’t visible to the wider world – but the story it told might be as important as Ogier’s 10th win.
Rallying is one of the few sports where you don't have to be a professional to compete on the biggest stage
There are few professions as rare, or as difficult to get into, as being a professional sportsperson. Ogier’s record-extending victory was an incredible feat. But for those of us who didn’t manage to be in the right place at the right time to capitalize on our talents, like Ogier on the Rally Jeunes talent search all those years ago, 2025 was also a useful reminder that cresting the Turini, zooming past the flying finish and then sitting in the emotion of the long drive back to Monaco isn’t beyond us mere mortals – even the ones who haven’t made millions as ultra high net worth entrepreneurs.
“If I never knew Mattia [Pastorino], who gave my name [to Marc Dessi], maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” Giuliano reflected. “If you do well and show to others in small rallies that you work with passion, with diligence and try to do your best, then even if you finish last, it can help. In the end, it’s this that gave me the possibility to do Monte.”
So, a question. Casino Square, Paviljonki, Athens, Coimbra – which hallowed ground are you dreaming of? Because Giuliano’s story has proven that not every dream needs to stay that way, even if you’re not a sporting superstar.
