Dream and Reality

At 19 he had never sat in a race car before. At 21 he was driving in a rally World Championship. What sounds like a dream is Andreas Aigner’s reality.

Imagine: you are 19, you work as an auto mechanic and all you know about car racing is what you see on TV. Then you see a newspaper ad promising young drivers the chance to pilot a rally car. You decide on the spur of the moment to give it a try because, as you will say later in an interview, “all young guys like to drive fast cars.”

After three elimination rounds it’s clear: you have a remarkable talent for taking an automobile to the limits of physical laws. You win the competition, experienced pilots teach you the fine points of rally driving, you enter several events, turn in impressive performances and are now competing in your first World Championship in a World Rally car (WRC). A daydream? Not for Andreas Aigner.

A letter and its consequences

In January 2003, the then 19-year-old Austrian dropped an application for the Red Bull Rallye Driver Search program into the mailbox. “I never thought they would really take me,” says Aigner, who up to that time had never sat in a race car before. One year and three months later, Aigner had beaten out 366 competitors. “An extraordinary talent,” says rally pro Raimund Baumschlager (AUT), who, along with Armin Schwarz (GER), organized the talent competition and supervised Aigner’s further rally training. Andreas Aigner learned how you move a car on asphalt and gravel, how you compile route instructions – basically everything one needs to know in rally competition.

The acid test

In May 2004 Aigner, then 20, drove in his first rally, held in Croatia, and finished tenth. More races followed, primarily with close-to-production Group N cars. The Rallye Budapest was his first finish among the top three, and at the 2005 Cyprus Rallye, his first World Championship race, he took sixth place in Group N. After only 16 competitions, he was “knighted”: Andreas was invited to enter ten World Championship races in 2006 for the Red Bull Skoda Team in a Fabia WRC. Learning to trust the car, eating up the miles and testing the limits: this is Aigner’s agenda for the first World Championship races. His expectations for the season? “Gaining experience and enjoying myself. Because I’m fulfilling a dream here every day.”