Attention racers,
Event 17 is over, with the usual suspects fighting for the top spot, and here are the abridged results:
Full results and more on the event sheet.
PHLS#18 officially starts now. By a funny coincidence, we’ll be celebrating International Women’s Rights Day by driving Michèle Mouton’s Audi Quattro.
Michèle Mouton is a rally legend, entering the Rally Hall of Fame in 2012, and remains one of the best drivers in the sport. The Quattro is no less legendary, marking the beginning of a new era in rallying, creating a template still used today. And although Audi’s participation in WRC was short-lived, from 1981 to 1987 only, it was a shooting star that burned brightly thanks to the Quattro and to Michèle Mouton.
Full details and polls for events 19 and 20 to be found on the top post. As this is a one-make event, the CAR# marker is not required.
About the Quattro
In WRC, and up to very recently, regulations required that all cars had to be based on a production model. Unfortunately for the FIA, nothing in the rulebook said manufacturers couldn’t design a race car, and build just enough road-legal examples to pass homologation. And so Audi did just that, like virtually everybody else at the time.
The story of the Quattro starts in 1977 when Ferdinand Piëch initiated the development of a car to compete in WRC. His brainchild would be the Audi Quattro. The Quattro set itself apart in three major ways: a permanent four-wheel drive system, an inline-5 engine, and a big turbocharger. It was sold for the road, but the Quattro was unmistakably designed for rallying.
Audi Quattro, 1982, Rallye de Monte-Carlo
The car did its first races in 1980, but properly debuted in the 1981 WRC season under Group 4 regulations, claiming its first win at the Rallye Sanremo in the hands of Michèle Mouton. In 1982, the FIA introduced Group B, and the Quattro thus received a few modifications, gaining a few horses and losing a few kilos. Audi would take the manufacturer’s championship, with 8 podiums and 5 wins out of 12 races.
But it was no time to rest on their laurels. With the Lancia entering the 037 for its first full season in 1983, and Peugeot testing its 205 Turbo 16, Audi upped the ante with the Sport quattro, a shorter, lighter, more powerful version, and a major evolution over the original. The battle between Audi, Lancia and Peugeot would continue until the end of Group B, with the Quattro always proving to be a worthy adversary.
Audi Quattro S1, 1985, Pikes Peak Hill Climb
The Audi Quattro was a big revolution. Although Lancia clawed a win in 1983 (with a good amount of cheating ingenious rule interpretation), that would be the last time such a car would win the championship. From then on, if you wanted to win, you had to follow the template of the Quattro, you had to have four-wheel drive, and you had to have a turbocharger.
About Michèle Mouton
In the 1970s, what most people first noticed about Michèle Mouton was that she was a woman, something still of a rarity in major motorsports today, so imagine reactions back then. But she made a name for herself simply because she was bloody good behind the wheel.
Mouton started her rally career as a codriver, to help a friend, eventually entering the very first WRC event, the 1973 Rallye de Monte-Carlo, as the codriver of Jean Taibi. She quickly moved to the driver seat, and in 1974 drove an Alpine A110 in the Tour de Corse rally. Out of 101 entries, she finished 12th overall out of 24, and 1st of the Group 3 drivers, the lower category after Group 4.
Michèle Mouton in her Alpine, 1976, Rallye de Monte-Carlo
She took part in the 1975 24 heures du Mans, in an all-female team with Marianne Hoepfner and Christine Dacremont, winning in their category. Mouton joined the Fiat rally team in 1977. Although unimpressed by the Abarth 131, she still managed to win the 1978 Tour de France Automobile with it, and took 4th place in the WRC overall.
In 1980, Audi made waves by hiring her, a move that would attract more attention than the car itself. With the car ready and homologated for 1981, Michèle Mouton would take her very first WRC win with codriver Fabrizia Pons, a first for a female driver in WRC, and also the first for Audi.
Audi Quattro, 1982, Acropolis Rally
Group B regulations are introduced for 1982. Mouton won three times, in Portugal, Greece, and Brazil, finishing second overall behind Walter Röhrl’s Opel Ascona, but giving Audi its first (of two) manufacturer title. After a 5th place in 1983, she didn’t contend for the championship in 1984, taking part in only a handful of events, and just one in 1985, perhaps busy taking her Quattro to the top of Pikes Peak, not only the first woman to win, but at the time breaking the record by 13 seconds.
Mouton kept racing for Peugeot in various rallies, notably the German Rally Championship in 1986 (that she won), in various ERC and WRC events, and in the Paris-Dakar rally raid. In 1988, she created the Race of Champions, a yearly race featuring some of the best drivers in the world. She kept racing occasionally, and was eventually appointed FIA WRC Safety Delegate in 2011, retiring in 2024.
Michèle Mouton, 1985, Pikes Peak Hill Climb
The bulk of her racing career was in the 1970s and 1980s. Michèle Mouton was sometimes called “the Black Volcano”, due to her long black hair and reputedly fiery temper. She had to face the sometimes virulent sexism of her male peers, hurt in their ego to be beaten by a woman, but also journalists, spectators, or even organisers. And it’s true, she had very little patience for that.
But her achievements speak for themselves. When she won her 4th rally in 1982, that made her the 7th most successful driver in WRC, tied then with another legend, Ari Vatanen. Today, Mouton is widely considered the most successful female driver in motorsport history, and more than that, one of rallying’s best drivers ever.
Fabrizia Pons and Michèle Mouton, 1981, Rallye Sanremo