Walter Röhrl has entered the motorsport hall of fame

He’s the racing hero of TG’s Chris Harris. And now he’s been inducted into the FIA’s motorsport hall of fame. Walter Röhrl is the first rally driver – and perhaps more surprisingly, the first non-F1 world champion – to receive such an honour.

‘About flipping time,’ we say. Röhrl is a bona fide legend, as a two-time World Rally champion and four-times Monte Carlo Rally winner, in four different cars. It speaks volumes of a driver’s consistent victories that there’s no single car you absolutely associate him with.

Does your favourite Röhrl moment involve his mastery of the luscious Lancia 037? His breaking of the Pikes Peak hillclimb record in an Audi Quattro S1? A class victory at Le Mans in a Porsche 944?

Since the mid 1990s he’s been intrinsically linked with Porsche, too, and he was a key member of the development team on the 959, Carrera GT and 918 Spyder. Otherwise known as three of the very greatest supercars of all time.

Röhrl joins a hall of fame consisting of only Formula 1 drivers, with names like Clark, Hamilton, Hunt, Schumacher, Mansell, Surtees and Senna for company. But let him not be the last driver to represent another discipline. Who do you reckon should be next?

Top Gear rides with Walter Rohrl in an Audi Quattro