Laure in Monte Carlo
Laure Jaussaud is a French Tarmac specialist who has rallied in France since 2002, usually in a Renault Clio. She won the French ladies’ rally championship in 2007.
Her usual co-driver is her sister, Carine, and they are from a rallying family. For the first couple of years of her career, Laure had other female navigators sit beside her, but Carine started co-driving for her regularly in 2005. Previously, since 2000, she had co-driven for their father, Bernard. Laure has also sat beside her father on occasion.
Laure’s earliest rally outings were in a Renault Megane in 2002, when she entered the Vaison-la-Romaine Rally. By 2004, she had settled on a Renault Clio, a car she would use for the next eleven seasons.
For the first few years of her career, Laure stuck to local rallies, in or around her home département of Hautes-Alpes. In 2006, she scored her first top twenty finishes, two sixteenth places in the Venasque and Neige Hautes Alpes National rallies. The Hautes Alpes event also gave her her first class win, in N3.
In 2007, the sisters won the French ladies’ rally title, their first championship. They employed an all-female crew for at least some of the events. Laure’s best rally was probably the Mont Blanc-Morzine. She was 71st overall, and sixth in the F2 class.
Between 2008 and 2013, she went back to rallying locally, with varying degrees of success. Despite being a short competition season, 2013 was a good year for Laure, who was 20th in the Rallye National Hivernal des Hautes Alpes and 22nd in the Venasque National Rally.
The sisters broke the habit of a lifetime in 2014, abandoning the Clio for a Renault Twingo. One of their first events in the car, the Rallye National des Hautes Alpes, gave them a 20th place, second in class. This was a familiar rally for them, but a good result nevertheless, with 49 finishers, some in more powerful S2000 and N4 cars. The first rally Laure did in the Twingo was the Monte Carlo Rally, which she also finished. She was 33rd overall, against the WRC elite. She was also 32nd in the Rallye d’Antibes, with a second in the Coupe des Dames rankings and a class seventh. This was another competitive event, won by Brian Bouffier for the Hyundai works team.
2015 brought more WRC action in the Twingo. Laure was 60th on the Monte, out of 78 finishers. Later in the season, she did her first Tour de Corse, and was 75th, from 96 finishers. She missed out on the Coupe des Dames to Sophie Laurent, who was competing in another class. In between, she did the Rallye National du Laragnais, co-driven by Thomas Escartefigue. She was 23rd, and third in class.
Despite showing that she could hold her own in a World Championship rally, 2015 seems to have been Laure’s last year of competition. At the end of 2015, she was said to have been deciding whether to enter the Monte again, but she did not appear on the list.
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