Aoife Raftery joins Junior ERC in 2024

Irish rally driver Aoife Raftery will make her return to the Junior European Rally Championship for a full campaign - and will team-up with Hannah McKillop, who also entered her first WRC2 event. The duo will enter a Peugeot 208 Rally4 for Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy.

Photo by Andre Lavadinho / @World / Red Bull Content Pool

Starting next weekend in Hungary, the Junior European Rally Championship will see an all-female crew with Aoife Raftery returning to the series, teaming up with co-driver Hannah McKillop for the first event of the 2024 season.

Aoife joined five events in 2023, where she scored points in four rallies - and will be back with a Peugeot 208 Rally4. Having just started competing in 2021, Raftery has been the first and only female driver to be selected by the Rally Academy since the beginning of the programme in 2020.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity and a massive thank you to everyone behind me and the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy and my sponsors for making this happen", she commented. "It’s going to be a really exciting year ahead and we aim to bring everything that we learned in 2023 into this season and keep improving. I can’t wait to start my season.”

Raftery will be joined by Hannah McKillop at the first event in Hungary; the duo already worked together in two rallies in 2023, and were among the Rally4 class frontrunners. Hannah also navigated Chris Ingram in WRC2 at Rally Monte-Carlo.

The first event will take place from 12th to 14th April in Hungary.

Junior ERC 2024

Rally Hungary, 12 - 14 April (gravel)

Rally Islas Canarias, 2 - 4 May (asphalt)

Royal Rally of Scandinavia, 13 - 15 June (Sweden, gravel)

Rally Estonia, 5 - 7 July (gravel)

Rali Ceredigion, 30 August - 1 September (United Kingdom, asphalt)

Rally Silesia, 11 - 13 October (Poland, asphalt)

Photo by Predrag Vuckovic / Red Bull Content Pool