Lifestyle Profile - Special Feature
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First lady of motorsport is not for waiting

Natalie Barratt is a girl in a hurry. In just six years of rallying, the Alderley Edge-based driver has become the world's top female rally pilot and has contested 25 FIA World Rally Championship events since making her series debut on the 1998 Rally of Great Britain.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, in 2003 Natalie made the daring transition from rally car to race car to contest the SEAT Cupra Championship. Despite re-mastering the very different discipline of circuit racing, Natalie's heart remains in rallying and this year she returns to the World Rally scene to contest the Junior World Rally Championship in a MG ZR S1600.

Being a lady in a man's sport has meant Natalie has had to earn the respect of her peers the hard way, and the admiration now bestowed upon her is both genuine and deserved.

World Rallying is one of the toughest sports to successfully participate in, and last season proved that Natalie has the courage and skill to compete at the very top level. A crash on the 2001 Rally of Portugal, when she slid off the muddy road and rolled eight times down the side of a mountain, would have persuaded lesser drivers to take up circuit racing, where gravel traps and run off areas are the norm.

Instead, two weeks later Natalie was back contesting the Catalunya Rally - in a hired car, for her own had been destroyed. Ten weeks after that, Natalie became the first female driver for five years to score FIA points on a round of the World Championship, by finishing on the Teams' Cup podium on the Cyprus Rally. "That girl's got balls," said one male observer, and few disagreed.

Her bravery is not reserved for inside a rally car, for Natalie has overcome some incredibly difficult situations to get where she is. One of the biggest hurdles she faced was the same problem that links Tom Cruise and Einstein, Richard Branson and Leonardo da Vinci, Jackie Stewart and Beethoven - dyslexia.

Being a rally driver isn't the ideal occupation if confusion between left and right is an everyday hazard, but Natalie has worked hard to overcome this. Dyslexia didn't prevent her gaining a History of Arts Degree at Buckingham University nor a Diploma in Advertising and Marketing at St. James's College, London - and it hasn't slowed her behind a steering wheel either.

Mental, as well as physical, power enabled Natalie to score points on three ( Cyprus , Greece and Australia ) out of the six rounds of the 2001 FIA Teams' Cup in her Group N car. Against more powerful WRCar competition, she ended the season a magnificent 5 th in the series.

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