Souped up career

For two years in a row, Stephanie Simmonite has won the Mintex National Ladies' Championships with her 21-year-old sister, Rachael, as her navigator. Last year, the 26-year-old Yorkshire woman also drove away with the 1995 Mobil 1/Top Gear Ladies British Champion title, as well as being placed 39th of the 67 finishers in the Network Q RAC Rally.

Despite life in the fast lane, Stephanie remains committed to her catering career, which has won her plaudits in her native county.

"Catering came first in my life and it is something I will always stick to. If I go rallying full-time, instead of part-time, then it may be put on the back-burner for a while," she says.

Stephanie launched her catering business, originally Malt Kiln Cuisine, in March 1993. It has since become Simmonite Sisters Catering.

It is run from her family's home at Malt Kiln Hall at Thornton, near Bradford, and does corporate catering for a number of local clients, including Green Flag, one of her racing sponsors.

"Now that the rallying season is over, I can devote more time to it. I do mostly lunches for clients who to do want in-house entertaining. I try to be innovative with my menus. I am always looking for new ideas in magazines and books. I do a lot of working buffets, and Indian cooking is now popular here."

Stephanie liked cooking as a child and went on to take a national diploma in hotel and catering at Bradford College, before starting a degree in hospitality management at Leeds Polytechnic.

She began her career at Leeds-based Gilpins, where she specialised in racecourse catering at Pontefract, Ripon and York. But the demands of rally driving made it difficult for her to hold down a full-time job and led her to set up her own business.

"I was too tied working for Gilpins, so I went self-employed. I could do the catering during the week and rallying at the weekends, which suited me fine.

"Catering has given me the flexible career I need, and when my rallying career is over I will devote more time to it."

Stephanie has always had an interest in cars, driving a VW Beetle and a Mini around the fields of her Yorkshire home as a child. Her parents were leading off-road drivers, but few could have anticipated the success the Simmonite sisters have had in their rallying career, which started in the early 1990s.

Stephanie and Rachael are now just about the hottest commercial properties in the sport - a magnet for sponsorship from the likes of Green Flag, Pirelli, Shell and SW Auto Design.

The Daily Mail recently said that nobody other than Colin McRae, the UK's first world champion rally driver, excites more interest within the sport.

"We are ambitious and we would like to enter the World Championship in 1998. Our aim is to be in the top five of all British rally drivers, men and women," Stephanie says.

Is catering mundane by comparison? "No, I wouldn't say that. Clearly, it is different, but it is something I am interested in," she says. "I am keen on building a quality business. The standard of some we compete against is not good.

"There are a lot of people doing it as a mere sideline and offering meals at £2 a head. My aim is to keep standards up and I usually charge a minimum of £5 a head for 50 or more people."

Stephanie may also team up with her sister in catering, as well as in rallying. Rachael is following a consumer degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University and might join the company, the name of which already implies she is involved.

Simmonite Sisters Catering turns over a relatively modest £50,000-a-year, but Stephanie hopes to expand the operation in the long-term. "I want to remain Yorkshire-based, but I plan for the business to become bigger."