Personality profile
Driven by an ambition
to be the best by Peter Erlam
LOUISE Cook is a good example of how looks can be deceiving. She would not seem out of place in a girl band, on the catwalk or working in a trendy boutique. Louise has the confident air of a young woman who enjoys life to the full.
You would
certainly be forgiven for failing to guess that she is a rising star in a dangerous sport dominated by men. Curled up on the
settee at her boyfriend, Stefan's home in Aylesford near Maidstone, Louise, 24, recounts
the story of how her future career began to take shape when she was just six. "My dad bought me a little toy car, a mini jeep, which I spent hours driving around at home. I crashed it a few times into the conservatory and eventually smashed the front axle. I think dad might have regretted buying that! But that's how it all started.”
She added: "Dad used to take me to car shows at
Brands Hatch. His friend had a box there and we'd watch races every two months. Dad's passion for cars was just passed on." Fast-forward the story to Louise's late teens, when she entered a competition aimed at getting more women involved in rallying, and we find how her childhood scrapes in a battery-powered toy were beginning to pay off. "I went for it - and came second out of 1,000 women." She explained: "In the first round, they taught us
how to drift, do figures of eight and handbrake turns, and assessed how quickly we learnt. I got a call to say I was invited back to the final. They timed us and taught us how to use pace notes and do fitness tests. "I finished second but the winner was 26 so she had a bit of an advantage on me. I was 19. That gave me the confidence to get my motor sport rally licence. "My first rally was at Rockingham, Northamptonshire
in 2006. That was mad, so scary. Everything was so new to me. I was in a little Peugeot 205. I really enjoyed it and finished 51st out of 105 and I was the youngest driver. That's where I caught the rally bug." But, faced with a bill of £1,000 for fuel,
accommodation and transport, it was also one of the
4 Mid Kent Living
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