EXCLUSIVE: Yvan Muller Q&A
British touring car benchmark and World champion answers your questions
There was a 10-year spell between 2007 and 2016 where Yvan Muller didn’t finish outside the top three in the chase for the World Touring Car Championship. In that period, he won four titles and claimed 47 race victories.
The man from Alsace is the king of tin-top racing, but it was something the British fans already knew. An eight-year stint in the British Touring
Car Championship, seven of them with Vauxhall, and the title in 2003, meant he’d already laid down his credentials in a saloon car.
Muller turned 51 last year, but he had no time to celebrate as he was in the middle of a campaign in the World TCR series, which ultimately brought him to second in the points, one place behind his protege and nephew Yann Ehrlacher.
There have been thoughts of retirement – indeed, he has previously announced that he was stepping down from driving before being tempted back. Motorsport is a passion Muller simply can’t leave alone and he is a driver who is always looking for a challenge.
Take, for example, his exploits on the Dakar Rally or even in the World Rally Championship. There is nothing he won’t turn his hand to.
We set him a new challenge this week: to tackle the Motorsport News readers’ questions. As you can see from his answers, his is a career that would be the envy of most other drivers.
Question: Where did your passion from motorsport come from: your sister Cathy raced too, so was it in the family? John Charles
Via email
Yvan Muller: “It came from my father, because he was a hillclimb racer in the 1970s. He was purely an amateur. My older sister, Cathy, she was always with my father. One day when we were on holiday, father asked if she would like to have a go at some rental karting that was there, and she did. I couldn’t take part because I was seven years younger than her, so I was too small. Then, on the way back from holiday, my father stopped off somewhere and we bought a kart for Cathy, but it was just for fun, really. Then one of the guys at the track saw her and told us we should get her a licence and take part in some proper organised races. She did that and she had good results. Although I was younger, I was just waiting until the time I was old enough and when I was, I just followed in her wheeltracks and it was normal for me.
“We used to go karting together to start with, but she was in the top [more senior] categories and I was just starting out, and then she moved on to car racing quite quickly. So we never raced together properly.”
MN: Did you ever have the discussion about who is the better driver, you or her?
YM: “No, there was no point!”
Question: You climbed a long way up the single-seater ladder, all the way to Formula 3000. I remember watching you race in British Formula 2 in 1992 too. How close did you get to Formula 1? James Hilton
Via email
YM: “When you start out, that was the only thing that is in your mind. You come from karting and the only thing that matters to you is Formula 1. So I climbed through Formula Renault and through Formula 3. After British
F2, which James mentioned, I went into FIA Formula 3000 in 1993 but all the doors were closed to me then. I didn’t have the budget for F1 but also there were a lot of young drivers from my generation who were all chasing the same dream, which made it very hard to stand out. There were many drivers who were capable enough for F1. I didn’t even really speak to any F1 teams.
I had done my year in F3000 and it was alright, but not really good enough [Muller raced with Omegaland, but the car was unreliable and he only managed to score two points in the final round of the year, which left him 17th in the standings]. I had no chance of F1 and I hadn’t shown what I could really do.
“After that Formula 3000 season, I genuinely said to myself ‘OK, motor racing is over for me’. I thought I would go and work in the family transport business. But, out of the blue, I got a call from [leading French team] ORECA. They told me that they were going to test 15 drivers and there was a place up for grabs to do the French Touring Car Championship with BMW. There were drivers like Nicolas Minassian who was going there too and lots of other drivers who were at F3 or F3000 level from my generation.
“ORECA told me I was on the list and told me which day to go to Paul Ricard and get in the car. After those tests, ORECA decided to take me. It was at that point that I realised there was a life outside of Formula 1.”
MN: What did you think of a tin-top when you first drove one? Did you think they were slow?
YM: “I enjoyed it, of course, because after 1993 I thought my career was finished, over. Then I drove the BMW and I suddenly thought ‘OK, maybe I have a chance for another career now’. I jumped in, there was a roof, I thought ‘OK, that’s cool’. The BMW was a nice car and we were on Ricard, which was a track I knew well, and this was my chance to remain as a professional racing driver. I did my best on that day and finally they took me for the race seat. When a team like ORECA calls you and asks you to test, they are not going to take some stupid drivers, they are looking for the best so the competition for the seat was very high.”
Question: The British fans remember you coming to the UK with Audi. How come you moved from BMW to Audi for 1996? And what brought you the UK? Russell Scobbie
Via email
YM: “Well, first of all, after my first season of touring cars with ORECA, they asked me to do ice racing with BMW. Initially, I refused because I thought it was all for rally drivers and
I had no experience of that kind of thing. But team boss Hugues de Chaunac believed in me and wanted me to go and do it – he almost forced me.
I worked hard and I did it.
“BMW had pulled out of tin-top racing in France at the end of 1995 but ORECA wanted me to stay with them, because it had a Dodge Viper programme it was running in GT racing. But, at the same time, Audi made me a proposal to go and contest the Italian Touring
Car Championship.
“They wanted me to go there and help Dindo Capello win the title. I said OK. It was tough to say no to ORECA, but it was a good choice to go with Audi. The year before in the Italian championship, Capello had helped Emanuele Pirro to win the title, so my job for 1996 was to help Capello get a shot at the crown and that is exactly what happened and I finished fourth in the points.”
MN sets the scene: After racing in Italy, Muller’s journey with Audi took him to his employer’s homeland with a crack at the STW in 1997 to help develop the new front-wheel-drive Audi A4 and then he was seconded to the British Touring
Car Championship. He lined up in
1998 alongside John Bintcliffe.
Question: What did Yvan think of the British fans when he came for his first
BTCC season? And was he impressed with how big the BTCC was?
Jon Wood
Via email
YM: “Everyone knows that England is a big motorsport country – it is probably the biggest, certainly in Europe. I had a lot of pleasure racing in the UK because people love it. People come from all over to watch the races and they are passionate.
“I remember back when I did British Formula 2, for example. I would do my race and on the same race-day programme was touring cars, singleseaters, truck racing, GTs and also karting: just amazing. Even at lunchtime, there was a cycling race…
“But the BTCC scene in the UK was absolutely huge when I joined in 1998. OK, so it was a British championship but you might as well have called it a World championship. There were big manufacturers, professional teams and drivers, it had everything.”
MN sets the scene: After a year with Audi, Muller switched to Vauxhall and started a lengthy spell with the
Triple Right Race Engineering team. It ultimately brought him the title in 2003, but there was some tough times in the build-up to that, including an incredibly fractious season alongside Jason Plato in 2001. Plato won the title in
“I began to realise there was life outside F1” Yvan Muller