26 Jul 12

Finland
honour for
Mouton
and
Sainz

FIA World Rally Championship greats Michele Mouton and Carlos Sainz have been inducted into the Rally Hall of Fame at the Mobilia transport museum in Finland - and their efforts will be celebrated during the country's WRC counter next week.

They will join fellow inductees Rauno Aaltonen, Erik Carlsson, Paddy Hopkirk, Timo Makinen, Hannu Mikkola and Walter Rohrl following their nominations earlier this year by an international committee.

Their achievements are recognised in a special gallery within the Rally Hall of Fame exhibition in Kangasala, approximately 20 kilometres from Tampere. WRC.com has charted the careers of Mouton on Sainz below.

Michele Mouton

Now the WRC manager, 30 years ago Michele Mouton was in the thick of the WRC fight taming a fearsome Audi Quattro across some of the world’s toughest stages.

Not only is Mouton the only lady driver ever to win a round of the FIA World Rally Championship, in 1982 she came with an ace of becoming the only lady ever to lift the drivers’ crown. After a scintillating season, Michele finished second to Walter Rohrl, despite out-scoring the German star by three wins to two across the spread of the year.

Mouton competed on the first ever round of the WRC, the 1973 Rallye Monte-Carlo. She was, however, without a steering wheel in the French Alps as she co-drove Jean Taibi’s Peugeot 304. However, it wasn’t long before Michele switched to the driving seat and made 51 further WRC starts before her final outing at the highest level on the 1986 Tour de Corse.

She collected four wins - all with the legendary Audi Quattro and took podium results on rallies as diverse as Britain’s RAC and Kenya’s Safari rallies.

Carlos Sainz

Few drivers can claim to have led a rally on their WRC debut - even fewer can claim to be the first non-Scandinavian to win the 1,000 Lakes Rally (now Neste Oil Rally Finland). Carlos Sainz can do both.

Sainz could have been a professional squash player or taken to the field for Real Madrid, but instead he chose to grace the stages of the FIA World Rally Championship. And, after his debut in 1987, he drove for the mighty Toyota squad in 1989 and took the world title with them a season later. One of the highlights of that 1990 title-winning year was Sainz’s success in Jyvaskyla.

Had it not been for Swedish driver Mikael Ericsson’s victory in Finland 12 months earlier, Carlos would have been the first non-Finn to win the nation’s round of the world championship.

From the start of the event, Sainz had looked very much an outside bet for victory having injured his left foot in an accident before the rally. The Spaniard had been driving through the second stage for one final look at the road, when he came over a crest to find two cars blocking the road. Sainz avoided them, but hit a bank in the process. To add insult to injury, the other drivers left the scene pretty quickly...

Sainz overcame his injury to take an exceptional and historic win in his Celica. He won a total of 26 world rallies and two titles and remains the driver who has contested the most rounds of the championship.

The Rally of Hall of Fame will include a display featuring Mouton and her fellow 2012 inductee Carlos Sainz in the Neste Oil Rally Finland headquarters during next week’s event.