A dream has come true for Claire Schönborn. With a convincing performance at Rally Sweden, the second round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), the 25-year-old from Löffelscheid (Germany) won the World Rally Championship promoter’s “Beyond Rally Women’s Driver Development Program” and thus secured a cockpit for the Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC) 2025. Alongside her co-driver Jara Hain (25, Göttingen [Germany]), the German mastered the treacherous snow and ice conditions in her only fifth rally in commanding style and drove her Ford Fiesta Rally3 to the finish in seventh place in the JWRC standings. As a reward for his impressive performance, Schönborn will now be able to contest the remaining four rounds of the JWRC season in Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport team.

After crossing the finish line, Claire struggled to keep her composure. “I can’t put into words what’s going on inside me. So much has happened so quickly over the past few months that I will need some time to process everything. Six months ago, I drove my very first rally and now I’m competing in the world championship. If someone had predicted this to me last summer, I would have declared them crazy,” beamed the young woman from Hunsrück, who only made her rally debut last August on the occasion of a guest start in the ADAC Opel Electric Rally Cup.

To date, Claire Schönborn, who works as a systems engineer for a major automotive supplier in civilian life, has been successful in hill climbs and was the first woman and youngest ever participant to win the KW Hill Climb Cup in 2024. As part of the large-scale screening as part of the “Beyond Rally” program, she qualified from 15 competitors from all over the world for a start at the Central European Rally 2024 and was so convincing at this World Championship round in the border triangle of Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic that there was now a play-off in Sweden between her and Belgian Lyssia Baudet for the promotional cockpit in the 2025 Junior World Championship. The competitors in the JWRC compete in identical Ford Fiesta Rally3s, which have a 235 hp 1.5-liter three-cylinder turbo engine and all-wheel drive.

This was preceded by extensive preparation for the Schönborn/Hain duo, which included winter driving training in Finland (with two-time world rally champion Marcus Grönholm as instructor, among others) and a start as the lead car at the Arctic Lapland Rally, as well as three days of testing at the John Haugland Winter Rally School in Norway. “This preparation was extremely valuable. I had never driven with spikes before. Being able to push myself to the limit and understand how high the grip level is, even on snow and ice, was a basic prerequisite for being able to hold my own here in Sweden,” explained Claire.

The rally around Umeå, a town of 115,000 inhabitants on the Gulf of Bothnia around 600 kilometers north of Stockholm, proved to be the challenging task expected. The total distance of 1060.05 kilometers included 18 special stages over 300.22 km on snow and ice. “Jara and I have tried to block out the pressure as much as possible and concentrate on our job,” says Schönborn. “Keeping my focus throughout the entire week of the event was not easy. For me, this winter rally with its ultra-fast stages on sometimes extremely slippery terrain, and sometimes in the dark, was probably the most difficult on the entire JWRC calendar. The danger of making a serious mistake lurked around practically every corner. I feel that I’m nowhere near reaching my full potential. But we still managed to find a good rhythm and a constant pace without taking unnecessary risks. That was the key to this success.”

Claire Schönborn has time until the second JWRC round in Portugal in May to let everything sink in and prepare for the big tasks ahead. “I can only thank all the people who have supported me on this incredible journey – first and foremost Jara, whose enormous experience and professionalism has given me the necessary calm and confidence. And of course I would like to thank everyone involved at the WRC promoter and M-Sport, as well as our main sponsor Capital Box and our other partners, without whom none of this would be possible. I am living my dream and that is an indescribable privilege. I am looking forward to everything that is yet to come.”