The 29-year-old made history last year when she became the first female to win the Australian Rally Championship, edging out four-time champion Simon Evans by two points. 

Taylor and co-driver Bill Hayes sit three points behind leader Harry Bates in this year’s championship with two rounds to go, but with two months until the next stage, the duo will first set their sights on taking out the third stage of the Tasmanian Rally Series.

Having become the first woman to win a stage of the TRS last year, Taylor will enter Saturday’s eight-stage, 108km Mountain Stages Rally at Mathinna with plenty of confidence.   

“We did another rally in Hobart last year which we won so that was really cool,” Taylor said.

“There’s a lot of fast locals so I think we’ve got our work cut out for us on the weekend, but we’ll try and do the best that we can.

“Our next Australian Championship round isn’t until September so this is a good opportunity just to stay fresh and keep the time in the car, and we’ve got a few things with the setup that we want to test over the weekend so we’ll try and do that as well.”

After arriving with her Subaru WRX STi in Launceston on Wednesday, Taylor visited a handful of Northern schools on Thursday and will test-drive the Mathinna course with Hayes on Friday to make pacenotes.

Taylor said the full-on schedule, which will see her return to the mainland on Monday, was hectic but necessary for preparing her for the rest of the year. 

“Motorsport is a really tough sport in that if you play tennis you can go and hit a tennis ball every day, whereas in rally we only get this opportunity at the events, so it’s very unique in that way that you don’t really get any time to practise.

“Any extra opportunity we get to practise in the car is like gold for us so we try to make the most of it.” 

Even after ticking off a bucket list item by winning the Australian title last year, Taylor remains as motivated as ever and is determined to retain the title of Australian Rally Champion into 2018.

But the Sydneysider knows that such a feat won’t come easy. 

“The main goal of the whole year is to go back to back… it’s going to be a tough job trying to do it but we’re going to give it everything. 

“(Bates is) very fast as well, the competition so far has been really really close between us so we’re just going to have to keep fighting as hard as we can and hopefully that’s enough.”

The first stage will get under way at 9.30am Saturday.