No stopping (yet) for Michele Mouton
“Henri Toivonen had his fatal accident on that year’s Tour de Corse,” she says, “and the FIA announced soon afterwards that Group B would be axed at the end of the year. When I heard that I said, ‘OK, it’s the right time for me to stop, too.’ In my mind I had a clear idea that I wanted to start a family and the timing seemed right.”
Her daughter Jessica was born in 1987, but Mouton remained actively engaged with the sport that forged her celebrity. One year later she co-founded the Race of Champions. She also entered a few rally-raids, as part of Peugeot’s support team carrying spare parts for its lead drivers – and despite this being her primary role, she still finished sixth on the 1988 Rally of Tunisia. It wasn’t, though, a branch of the sport she wanted to tackle seriously. “In my era it was all done without GPS, more of a job for the navigator and the compass, so I’d have felt like a high-speed taxi driver. I don’t like adventures that are full of uncertainties, shovelling sand, getting lost… that’s not really my thing. I love driving, but it has to be enjoyable. It’s not that I couldn’t have done Dakar, but I never wanted to. I contested a few rally-raids and finished reasonably well, but it was a means of helping the team, not having any pressure, and that was fine.”
Although she officially ended her career in 1989. she has dabbled with driving since – contesting the Trophée Andros ice-racing series once, finishing second to former team-mate Blomqvist on the 2000 London-Sydney Marathon and reuniting with Pons to drive an Escot on the 2008 Rally of Otago (NZ) and a Porsche in the Morocco Historic rally in 2017 – but she says competing on historic events holds little real interest. “Why would I want to revisit stages I’ve known for years?” she says. “I want fresh challenges.”
She got her challenge heading up the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission.
“It’s difficult for anyone to succeed in this sport, male or female,” she says. “Maybe it’s harder now than it was in my time, but it’s not that I was some kind of superwoman. I would love to see more people getting the kind of opportunities I had and that’s what we are striving for now. We must make everybody aware that motor sport is inclusive, open to all…… We need opportunities, equal opportunities, and very often the ones who cannot progress stumble because of budget, although it’s the same for men of course….”
Michèle Mouton is a big fan of the girl on Track karting challenge and the Dare to be different project for young female drivers. They couldn’t hope for a much better role model. “You know,” she says, “I’ve had a fantastic career. Rallying gave me a chance to learn all about the world, visiting and exploring many countries. We were sometimes practising for 10-15 days before events, which gave you time to get a real feel for the local culture.”
“My life philosophy? Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery – and today is a gift, so it’s today that I want to live. Nothing can change what happened in the past, tomorrow perhaps I’ll be dead, so I just want to enjoy every day.”
