A Hawk Racing Club Renault Clio. This is not Marta Candian driving!
Marta Candian was an Italian driver who competed in WRC rallies between 1999 and 2001.
She is a very enigmatic figure; I have been unable to find any pictures of her. A Rallysprint magazine cover from 2000 shows that she had some media profile at the time, as part of an article on female drivers, including Lara Battistolli, Mascha Mularo and Enrica Munaretto. Despite this attention, biographical details about Marta are extremely hard to come by.
She deserves to have a full Speedqueens profile due to her World Championship participation. If a European Ladies’ Championship were being awarded in 2000, she would probably have won it.
The earliest record of Marta as a competitor appears in 1995, when she co-drove for Emanuele Zecchin. They did the Piancavallo Rally together twice, in 1995 and 1996, finishing once.
In 1998, she starts to appear in major rallies as a driver. She was associated with the Hawk Racing Club team, and she drove both a Ford Escort RS Cosworth and a Renault Clio Williams for them that year. She was 49th in the Isola d’Elba Rally in the Clio, but did not finish the Rallye d’Antibes in the Escort.
In 1999 she used a Renault Clio Williams on the Portugal, Catalunya and Corsica rounds of the World Rally Championship. She finished the Tour de Corse in 48thplace, her first WRC finish. As well as her southern European WRC rallies, she did some ERC events in the Clio and a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 5. Her best result was tenth on the Rally d’Antibes, in the Mitsubishi, and she was third in Group N. The Lancer was run by the Hawk Racing Club team again.
She drove the Lancer in the Monte Carlo, Portugal and Catalunya rallies in 2000, and managed to finish the Catalunya Rally in 32nd. She was 47th on the Monte, but the engine on the Lancer failed in Portugal.
In 2001 she tackled Corsica and Catalunya, and was seventh in Group N in Corsica, fifth in N4 and 33rd overall. As ever, her navigator was Mara Biotti, who sat beside her in all of her major rally outings.
After 2001, Marta disappears from the scene completely. She seems to have been linked to a drive in Rally Argentina, but this never occurred.
Any further information about Marta and Mara, or any pictures, would be most welcome.
(Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/pietroz/4448042513/)