Michele Mouton

I could have chosen three events for this. It is very difficult to pick just one, you know. Every rally is different, always changing and always something new.

Throughout my career I tried to get higher and higher, but making progress slowly. Corsica in 1986 was my comeback event, on asphalt, with Peugeot. I only did half of the first etape, but I was back in a top car and as I was third when I retired, it proved to me that I was still at the top, on the pace.

It was really fantastic, good for my self confidence. With Audi, we never had a chance to do Corsica, so it was hard work, especially after such a gap. It was very big satisfaction for me.

There was also the RAC Rally in 1982 when I finished second to Hannu. It had been a terrible fight all the time with Henri Toivonen and I didn't have any pace notes that could help me. It was the car and the driver, full stop! This was real rallying, a driver and a car on a road that you don't know. Improvisation!

You never knew where you were throughout the event, you just go and go and go! It was very foggy and I had to work very hard just to stay on the road. I remember one stage when the finish was just in a corner and I saw the marks made by Henri. Oy, oy!

Suddenly I was on those same marks and I thought: 'This is it, it is finished!' I had never been frightened so much, not knowing how to drive in those conditions. Arne Hertz had tried to teach my co-driver, Fabrizia, how to read the maps, but I couldn't trust them at all.

But the most important rally for me must have been the San Remo Rally of 1981.

This was not because it was a woman winning, but for me, as a driver, it was the first time that I realised that I could be at the top. I knew then that, if I won one event, I could win others.

It was a big fight with Ari Vatanen all the time, but it meant that I now knew that I could win.

As usual in San Remo, it was all decided on the last night. I had finished the previous etape in second place, 32 seconds behind another Audi, driven by Michele Cinotto. Walter Rohrl was third.

We had finished the gravel stages and had driven back to San Remo for some rest before the final night's tarmac stages.

I could not sleep, not at all. All the time I was thinking that I had Ari Vatanen behind me and that he was driving for the World Championship.

It was an impossible situation. I asked a friend to try and find Etienne, Audi's blind osteopath, to help me to sleep, get some rest or just relax. Usually I have such a strong character. In a rally I can just close my eyes and sleep whenever I need, but not this rally.

Luckily, Etienne was found and he put his hands behind my neck and boom, I was asleep.

I knew what I had to do. Ari would try very hard, so would I, but I had to try and drive as though there was no pressure at all.

There was only a few seconds between us, we had broken a brake caliper between two stages and Ari was so close. I told Fabrizia that this was the first stage of the night and that one of us would not finish the stage, both of us were trying so hard.

I told her that we would have to drive as though it was the first stage of the rally, not just the first of the final night.

We reached the service in the mountains and waited for Ari. And waited.

Ari had a big problem. He was chasing the title and second would have been enough for him to win it. But finishing second behind me was, for him, nothing, so I knew he would be trying everything to beat me on these last stages.

Then we heard that he had crashed, hit a rock hidden in some grass and got three punctures. It was all over for him but he still finished seventh.

I don't even know what the gap was now to the second placed person. All I had cared about up to then was Ari.

It was good for me to have to work out the tactics in that situation, to drive in such a way as not to feel so much pressure.

It took a long time for it to sink in, for me to realise what I had done. As a driver, just to feel that I had been able to cope with that pressure, was very important.

But I would never want to have to go through that ever again!