Career
At the age of 21, Auriol started rallying in an old Simca 1000. He drove the Simca 2 Years, then he got a Renault 5 Turbo, With this car, he drove in the French Rallye Championship. In 1986 a MG dealer gave him a Metro 6R4. With this car, he won his first French Rallye Championship. With the beginning of the Group A car time, he got a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth and with his car he was French Rallye Champion 1987 and 1988
Auriol won his first World Championship event, the 1988 Tour de Corse, whilst driving a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth. For 1989 he moved to the Martini Lancia team, where he remained for four seasons, driving three successive versions of the then-dominant Lancia Delta Integrale. In 1992, driving the final evolution of the car, he won six events in one season (a record until beaten by Sébastien Loeb in 2005), but poor results on other rounds and retirement on the last event of the season, the RAC Rally, handed the world championship to Carlos Sainz.
In 1993 Auriol switched to the Toyota team, and won the World Championship in 1994 driving one of the most fabled mounts in the history of the series: the Toyota Celica GT-Four ST185. However he has found fame and distinction for a plethora of other reasons. In 1995, he took the first win for the Celica GT-Four ST205 in Tour de Corse. However, later in the same season, on the Rally Catalunya, Toyota were found to have used an illegal device in the turbocharger to increase the power of the engine, and were excluded from the results of the 1995 championship and banned for next year. 1996 Auriol contested only two World Championship events. He drove for Subaru in Sweden and for Mitsubishi in San Remo. 1997 he entried in Monte Carlo with private Ford, and drove couple of rallies with Toyota's new Corolla WRC. Auriol drove for Toyota two next years, gaining two wins. When Toyota retired from World Rally Championship after 1999, Auriol moved to SEAT on board of the SEAT Córdoba WRC E2. With Auriol's experience, SEAT managed to grab the third podium place at the Safari Rally in Kenya, and later that season to launch their third evolution of the Córdoba WRC. However at the end of the season the Spanish manufacturer retired from WRC to focus on the development of a special series of high performance cars. Auriol still managed to deal with Peugeot for 2001 season, but in only asphalt-rallies Auriol managed to be quicker, than his team mate, Marcus Grönholm. Auriol's only win that year came from Catalunya. 2002 was kind of gap year for Auriol, but he made contract with Skoda team for 2003. Auriol was responsible for the development work of the Škoda Fabia WRC.
Another notable achievement in Auriol's reportoire is being a six-time winner of the Tour de Corse, level record holder with Bernard Darniche. Even as late as 2001 Auriol was still racking up podiums there.
Read more about this topic: Didier Auriol
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