Rosemary Smith

Rosemary Smith (7 August 1937 – 5 December 2023) was an Irish rally driver from Dublin. She initially trained as a dress designer.

Biography


Smith entered her first rally as a co-driver. After deciding that navigating was not to her liking, she switched to driving. She came to the attention of the Rootes Group's Competition Department, which offered her a works drive.

In 1958, she and Valerie Domleo, a British physicist, won the four-day Dutch Tulip Rally. The duo drove "a factory entered Hillman Imp" as one of 159 cars participating from sixteen countries in the April 1965 rally that covered roughly 1,800 miles (2 900 km).

In 1964, she took the ladies' prize on the Circuit of Ireland Rally driving a Sunbeam Rapier. The following year she won the Tulip Rally outright in a Hillman Imp.

Smith was controversially disqualified from the 1966 Monte Carlo Rally after winning the Coupe des Dames, the ladies' class. Ten cars in total were disqualified. "Rosemary Smith said she would never compete again unless the decision was reversed."

Her other competition successes included an outright win in the 1969 Cork 20 Rally. She won the ladies' prize several times on the Scottish Rally and on the Circuit of Ireland Rally, twice each on the Alpine Rally and on the Canadian Shell 4000, and once on the Acropolis Rally. She also had numerous class wins to her name.

In 1966, she appeared as a guest on an episode of What's My Line. Arlene Francis, Mark Goodson, Ginger Rogers, and Bennett Cerf were on the panel and successfully guessed her "line" as a rally driver.

She established an Irish land speed record of 156.101mph on the Carrigrohane Straight in Cork in June 1978, driving a seven-litre Jaguar XJ6.

She founded a driving school in the 1990s. On 10 May 2017, she did a test drive with the show car of Renault F1 on the Circuit Paul Ricard as part of a filming day. This made her the oldest person to have driven an 800bhp racing car.

Smith died of cancer on 5 December 2023, aged 86.