She is the only one who won in the World Rally Championship. She was nicknamed “The Volcano” because of her temperament. She tamed 370-horsepower cars in the most dangerous era. 40 years ago he learned of his father’s death while fighting for the title
By
Darío Coronel< /i>
In 1975, on the Alpine, when he began to stand out in Europe (CORSA Archive)
The Frenchman Pierre Mouton was a prisoner during World War II and when he returned he formed his family in Grasse, and with his wife they dedicated themselves to growing roses on their large property. On June 23, 1951, his daughter Michele was born., who was always educated with complete freedom and accompanied her in all her dreams, even when she told them that she wanted to race in cars. She is the woman who changed the history of motorsports and became the greatest driver of all time. This is her story about her.
she drove for the first time when she was 14 years old. “For me, driving a car was synonymous with freedom, independence and movement. I first got behind the wheel when I was 14 years old. My friend had to push because I couldn’t start. I was just looking forward to my 18th birthday because of my driver’s license,” he recounted. After finishing high school she ended up falling in love with motorsports. “I started in 1972 as a navigator on an Alpine A110. But I wanted to drive. I had always liked cars and as soon as I had the opportunity I took it. The studies that I followed and finished at that time were aimed at helping disabled children, but cars took me all the time. My father… Well, my father is something special. He never tried to make me change my mind. And, furthermore, he told me: ‘Well, if you like motor racing so much, I’m going to finance you for a season. But if after a year the results do not appear, you leave this forever. Said and done. I bought an Alpine A110 and started”, she said in an interview with CORSA .
The results appeared. In 1973 she ran some rallies for the French and European championships, but she was still (for her male rivals), “a girl with very particular tastes”, as some of her defined her. But she fed on those prejudices and knew how to break with that paradigm.
In 1983 at the Great Britain Rally on the Audi Quatto (Mike Powell /Allsport)
Years passed and she slowly but steadily transformed into a skilled pilot. The A110 she was followed by an A310 with which she won her first championship, the European Ladies. Then there was a Porsche 911 until she, with the support of France, climbed onto a real “gadget”: a Fiat 131 Abarth. In the European tournament between 1976 and 1979 she achieved two wins (Spain 1977 and Tour de France 1978), five second places and five third places. She had already debuted in the World Championship and her best results were fifth positions, all in France, in 1978, 1979 and 1980.
“For me, racing is like a sealed compartment of life. The vast majority of my friends, for example, have nothing to do with them, except for a rare exception. Although, of course, the mere fact of running in such a competitive and difficult environment has changed traits of my personality. It may not be so spontaneous sometimes, but there is supposed to be a price to pay, right?”, she maintained.
“A woman, in my case, gets the same contracts a man can have, and quite favorable ones. But I don’t race for money, and the fact that she’s a professional driver doesn’t mean she wouldn’t – if need be – do it amateurishly. I run because I like it, and a lot ”, she underlined.
She and her navigator make fun of Walter Röhrl, after winning the Acropolis Rally in 1982 (CORSA File)
At that time he admitted that his way of running is not like that of men: “I think I do it differently. I think I always ran applying the characteristics of women: regularity, reflection, organization. So I usually do ‘my career’ without worrying about others. But this is not only a feminine gift; Rather, it is held by professionals and those who are sure of their possibilities and means.”
In 1981, Audi Motorsport saw her conditions and hired her to be a teammate of Hannu Mikkola and race with the emblematic Quattro, one of the most revolutionary cars of the time: 370 horsepower , double traction, turbo and electronic injection, among other features. In her debut with the German house in Montecarlo 1981, the breakage of a gasoline pipe left her without chances. But from that moment on, her goal was to run regularly in the World Cup.
In Portugal things improved and his fourth place announced that victory was at hand. Then, by winning the qualifying section of the Acropolis Rally, she became the first woman to lead the general classification of a date for the World Rally Championship and achieved complete victory in the traditional San Remo Rally, in Italy, on the 10th of October, sailed by the Italian Fabrizia Pons. The female binomial caused a sensation. “To San Remo the team went with the ‘mixed’ cars in its suspension. The asphalt and gravel sections would have required a ‘specialized’ treatment, but changing it completely takes three and a half hours, and it was too long. It was a tough rally and at one point, before starting the last stage, I had a nervous breakdown after having been at the limit or almost the whole race, a broken brake caliper also caused a semi-axle to break, leaving almost zero all the advantage he had accumulated. At that moment I was completely demoralized, but the next day when I had to attack hard, I did it and kept the difference”, she recalled about her historic victory in Italy, where the World Rally is contesting its fifth date this weekend, but in Sardinia .
Michele was super professional and achieved four wins and a runner-up position in the World Rally Championship (Corsa Archive)
In 1982 came the consecration, as he won another three races. On March 8, she prevailed in Portugal, whose 40 primes (speed sections) were witnessed by 500 thousand spectators . On June 3 he repeated at Acropolis, in Greece, where the pressure he maintained throughout the race was not just to stay on top, something he was able to do without much effort. His handling was superb and he held the lead throughout the demanding test. And on August 14 he celebrated in Brazil, where he had a particular anecdote since, in the link, the section that is not timed and where the cars go from one point to another to be able to start the stages, when he crossed the center of Petrópolis, his Audi Quattro was hit by a VW Beetle: “It was incredible. He pointed at me and came straight at me. That man was a suicide, a kamikaze”, said Mouton, whose car was left with a damaged front left fender and was helped by the Kenyan Shekhar Mehta and his partner Yvonne, the Nissan duo.
Michele confirmed herself as a candidate for the title and lost the championship in the Ivory Coast, where she had been fighting the race with Röhrl, when she was informed during the course of proof of his father’s death. According to her, Pierre was the secret of her success: “She loved driving. He loved fast cars. And I think she would have loved to do what I did. He was a prisoner of war for five years and when he came back he never got a chance to compete. But together with my mother they came to all my races, ”said the Frenchwoman, who was nicknamed“ El Volcán ”because of her temperament. “I didn’t care about the championship, there was no comparison. I tried, we tried everything and it didn’t work, that’s all. This is life. You can’t win all the time. I lost a lot compared to the competition,” she stated. The German Walter Röhrl (Opel Ascona), was champion with 109 points against 97 for Mouton.
“I do not aspire to become a champion of the movement feminist or anything like that. The only thing I want is to be considered as a rally driver, which is what I am after all, ”Michele put forward after he was runner-up. At that time he lived with his partner, the sports journalist Claude Guarnieri, in Roquefort Les Pins, near the Côte d’Azur. His house was a Provençal type, furnished with antiques. “Most of the time I spend making roadmaps, plans, or running. But this life will end when she has a child; then I will leave everything to dedicate myself to my family, which is the most important thing of all.”
Michele Mouton in action at the 1983 Rally de la República Argentina in Bariloche
In 1983 she ran in Argentina and was third in Bariloche, despite the complications she had. “I had problems of all kinds, particularly in the snow and mud. In most of the places my car passed because it has four-wheel drive, otherwise it would have been impossible to continue. In the rallies for the World Championship the difficulties do not reach the extreme degree that we had to go through. We had to use rubber nails, ”she recounted. “Racing in these conditions means nothing. It is an effort that does not reflect the natural conditions, both of the cars and the drivers, luck becomes the fundamental factor and I don’t like to compete like this”, he clarified.
That was the second year of the Group B regulations in the World Rally. It was a unique and unrepeatable time, in which the brands were allowed to build prototypes to race (“thoroughbred” cars), but with the condition of manufacturing only 200 units for the market. Except for Audi, the rest used rear engines (from 300 to 450 horsepower) as if they were Formula cars. It was a very dangerous era that came to an end with the fatal accident of the Henri Toivonen-Sergio Cresta (Lancia) pairing in Corsica, France, in 1986. This tragedy raised the alarm in Michele, who decided to leave to run “After that, I knew that – if I continued to compete – I was going to miss my family life. He was 35 years old. It was clear to me, I told Frederik (Johnsson), my partner at the time: `I have to quit,’” he told Motorsport.
Fabrizia Pons and Michele Mouton at the start of the Rally of the Argentine Republic in 1983 (CORSA File)
The previous year she had achieved another milestone by winning the famous Pikes Peak climb race in the United States, achieving victory and becoming the first woman to win it, and also breaking the record time for the course. She went with an Audi Quattro.
His achievements continued and in 1986 he was crowned in the German Rally Championship with a Peugeot 205 T16. At that point, her conditions were indisputable and she inspired thousands of women in the world. It was the moment when she decided to devote herself fully to the family and in 1987 her daughter, Jessica, was born. “I stopped running and never regretted it, because I had Jessie, my daughter, the following year. It was the best moment ”, she acknowledged.
Michele Mouton at home in 1983 (Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images)
High and deep.
Since she broke into the World Cup they looked at her from the side and she knew how to stop being the color note, “the woman who encouraged motorsports”, to be the protagonist and winner. Finn Ari Vatanen, 1981 champion, shot: “The day a woman defeats me, I will stop competing.” Mouton won in San Remo and Vatanen did not retire. Röhrl was another to throw heavy ammunition at Michele, stating at the time that “you could put a monkey in the Audi and it would win”.
Even in the service parks (rally pits) the rumor circulated that she was chosen in her teams only because of who she slept with, that her cars or engines were altered to obtain an advantage and those accusations were refuted with her general results. since for more than a decade she was the protagonist in the various championships she competed in.
But she always responded with dignity, whether at the microphones and, most importantly, on the race car race. “I didn’t care, I knew what she was doing and who I was sleeping with,” she told The Guardian. “I never needed, nor wanted nor thought that I had to justify myself in anything. I did all of that myself. Not being the only woman in her world.” Motorsport Magazine, one of the most prestigious specialized media, stated: “For Mouton, her rivals never give her quarter because she is a rally driver among rally drivers.”
Sipping well-deserved champagne at the Otago Rally on May 11, 2008, with historic cars in New Zealand (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
And those criticisms from some of its competitors turned into praise. “A pioneer who will never be forgotten”, recognized Röhrl several years later. “She had woken up the rally world,” Vatanen stressed. Historical referents of Formula 1 also threw flowers at him. Sir Stirling Moss considered Mouton “one of the best”, and Niki Lauda described her as a “super woman”.
She had to compete in the first half of the eighties with the most dangerous era of the World Rally Championship and against heavyweights such as Walter Röhrl, Markku Alén, Hannu Mikkola, Stig Blomqvist, Ari Vatanen, Henry Toivonen, Guy Fréquelin, Timo Salonen, Bjorn Waldergard and Juha Kankkunen, among others.
In 1988 Mouton together with Frederik Johnson organized the Race of Champions to honor Toivonen’s memory. It is a special event that is usually held during the European winter break in various venues such as football stadiums or other places, where the champions of Formula 1, World Rally, IndyCar, MotoGP and other categories participate. Despite their egos, Michele was able to bring together the most important men in motorsport at the same time and place.
Last year in his last months at the FIA (FIA Press)
His numbers reflect 50 races for the World Rally Championship, with four wins, one runner-up, nine podium finishes and 162 stage wins. He was an official driver for Fiat, Audi and Peugeot. Due to her merits and the context of her achievements, she is considered the best pilot of all time.
Between 2009 and the end of 2021 she was president of the Commission of Women of Motor Sport of the International Automobile Federation (FIA). She fought for women to have more space, although one issue that did not sit well with her was the W Series category (she runs her ten dates with F1) where only women run. “The W Series are limited and discriminatory”, he stated in dialogue with the French newspaper Le Figaro.
In perspective and to the distance, she reflected that she “wasn’t thinking about glory or being famous.” And she made it clear what her purpose in motorsports was: “I did a good thing, I did a good thing. The important thing for me was to do it and do it well. For me it was not something that I had to show to others. I did it for me. I never fought against men. The important thing was to show myself that I could do it too”.