- Guy Fréquelin
WRC driver
Name = Guy Fréquelin
Caption =
Nationality = flagicon|France French
Years = 1973 – 1987
Teams =Talbot ,Opel
Races = 35
Championships = 0
Wins = 1
Podiums = 7
Stagewins = 35
Points = 150
First race = 1973Tour de Corse
First win = 1981Rally Argentina
Last race = 1987San Remo Rally Guy Fréquelin (born
2 April 1945 atLangres ) is a former French rally and sports car driver.Perhaps Fréquelin's finest hour as a driver came when he finished runner-up only to
Ari Vatanen , alongside then-navigatorJean Todt , at the wheel of a briefly competitiveTalbot Sunbeam Lotus in the driver's classification of the 1981World Rally Championship . It was during that year that he collected his only individual rally victory in the series, inRally Argentina .Fréquelin was also part of a four-car Renault assault on the
24 Hours of Le Mans in 1977 with their highly successfulAlpine Renault A442B . As part of a team which included the French racing drivers,Jean-Pierre Jabouille ,Jacques Lafitte ,Patrick Depailler ,Patrick Tambay ,Jean-Pierre Jaussaud ,Rene Arnoux andDidier Pironi , as well as the English long distance expert Derek Bell, Frequelin was named as the third driver for both the #7 Tambay/Jaussaud and the #16 Arnoux/Pironi machines. Neither cars were to finish the race. Tambay and Jaussaud eventually retired after just 158 laps with engine troubles to blame, while the sister #16 Arnoux/Pironi car was immediately out, with no laps registered to its name, after a turbo oil seal caused a fire. Fréquelin, though, was to return to the Sarthe circuit for the 1981 race, paired with countrymanRoger Dorchy in the #5 WM P79/80Peugeot . Again, though, he scored only a DNF after an engine fire forced the pair's exit after 46 laps.In more recent years, Fréquelin has held a position as Team Principal at the
Citroën Total World Rally Team . He retired at the end of 2007. In this position he oversaw the four consecutive world championship titles ofSébastien Loeb and an impressive number of victories in the Paris Dakar and in WRC, with cars such as the ZX, the Xsara and the C4.In rallying circles he is nicknamed the "Grizzly".
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