Juliet, 21, made it through to the finals from thousands of entries, where she competed with 22 other stunning contenders at the exclusive Stoke Park Golf Club- famous for 007 James Bond’s game of golf with arch villain Goldfinger.

The brainy law graduate wowed judges as she went through a series of photo shoots, interviews, tests and tasks and was picked to be one of the final six to be voted for by the readers of rallyXS and News of the World - who voted on line, by phone and via SMS text messaging.

The lovely Juliet set about meeting her rally heroes and going to motorsport events all around Ireland to drum up support. Her hard work paid off when she was announced as the 2002 rallyXS Pirelli Girl on Sunday 15 September.

Juliet said yesterday “I can’t wait to have a ride in the rally car and meet all the drivers, I’m the biggest rally fan so this will be my dream job for the next year.”

“Over 50,000 votes were cast on www.wrc.com, making this competition far and away the most popular promotion that we have run in the magazine. It demonstrates the growing appeal of the new World Rally. Juliet is a gorgeous girl who I have no doubt will do rallyXS and Pirelli proud.” Said Andrew Golby, editor of rallyXS.

Martin Pallot, International Motorsport Events Manager of Pirelli Tyres, said of the outcome “The rallyXS Pirelli Girl competition is great for the Pirelli brand and lifestyle it represents. For Juliet, this is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy all the motorsport events while travelling around the world. She will be a real asset to the both Pirelli and the sport.”

As the new rallyXS Pirelli Girl, Juliet will get a one-year contract with rallyXS magazine and Pirelli. She will work with Pirelli’s top drivers, take a ride in a 300bhp, €550,000 rally car and appear in rallyXS throughout the 2003 season. Her first assignment will be the Sanremo Rally in Italy this month.

The World Rally Championship (WRC) has always been one of the most demanding and challenging motorsport competitions on the planet. But over the last 18 months, WRC has undergone an unprecedented rise in popularity thanks to technological improvements in TV and network coverage.

Pitting man and machine against the harshest elements nature can throw at them, WRC takes place in 14 countries across four continents. In the UK, Channel 4 has committed to broadcasting at least 3 hours of prime time TV for each of the 14 events in the WRC calendar, bringing the WRC to more people than ever before. Combined with the popularity of the ‘official’ WRC PlayStation 2 game and www.wrc.com, everyone in the UK can now truly appreciate the spills and thrills of this sport.

From January to November the world’s best drivers do battle in some of the harshest environments on the planet - from the snow and ice of Sweden, the unforgiving mountain roads of Spain and Corsica, to the desert tracks of Africa and Australia - building to a finale in the muddy Welsh forests in Great Britain.

The Championship is about real heroes including past and current world champions Colin McRae and Richard Burns, real roads and real driving and along the way, the teams, drivers and co-drivers experience every imaginable condition, environment, terrain and culture.

It’s not just about sitting behind the wheel of a £400,000 WRC car, which are all road legal machines derived from marques we all know such as the Ford Focus and the Subaru Imprezza: a top-class World Rally Championship driver must be instinctive, brave, technical and tactically skilful. He must also be passionate, concentrated, precise and having unflinching trust in his co-driver. They both need to be a bit mad!