At the age of 21, Auriol started rallying in an old
Simca 1000. He drove the Simca for two years before getting a
Renault 5 Turbo to compete in the French Rally Championship. In 1986 he competed in a
Metro 6R4. With this car, he won his first French Rallye Championship. He contested it again the following year, the first of the
Group A years, in a
Ford Sierra RS Cosworth and with his car he was French Rally Champion 1987 and 1988. Auriol won his first World Championship event, the 1988
Tour de Corse, whilst driving a works Ford Sierra RS Cosworth. It was the only time that season when
Lancia were beaten in a straight fight, and the Lancia team signed him for the following year. He remained with the team for four seasons, driving three successive versions of the then-dominant
Lancia Delta Integrale. In 1992, driving the final evolution of the car, he won six events in one season (a record until beaten by
Sébastien Loeb in 2005), but poor results on other rounds and retirement on the last event of the season, the
RAC Rally, handed the world championship to
Carlos Sainz. on display. In 1993 Auriol switched to Toyota, and won his first event for the team, the
Monte Carlo Rally. He did not win again that season, but the following year he won the Corsica, Argentina and San Remo rallies and went into the final round, in Great Britain, vying again with Sainz for the championship. Despite a poor showing on the rally he emerged as World Champion after the Spanish driver went off the road on the final day. In 1995, he took the first win for the Celica GT-Four ST205 in
Tour de Corse with
Denis Giraudet, who replaced his regular co-driver
Bernard Occelli who was experiencing a family problem at that time. However, later in the same season, on the
Rally Catalunya, Toyota were found to have used an illegal device in the turbocharger to increase the power of the engine, and were excluded from the results of the 1995 championship and banned for next year. In 1996 Auriol contested only two World Championship events. He drove for Subaru in Sweden and for Mitsubishi in San Remo. 1997 he entered in Monte Carlo with a private Ford, and drove couple of rallies with Toyota's new Corolla WRC. In 1998 Auriol became a Toyota full-time driver. he earned one win and four podiums, finishing fifth in the overall standings. In 1999 he scored one win and seven podiums, which placed him third in points. As Toyota retired from World Rally Championship after 1999, Auriol moved to
SEAT Sport, driving the
SEAT Córdoba WRC E2. Using Auriol's experience, SEAT managed to grab the third podium place at the
Safari Rally in Kenya, and later that season to launch their third evolution of the Córdoba WRC. However at the end of the season the Spanish manufacturer retired from WRC to focus on the development of a special series of high performance cars. Auriol landed a drive with
Peugeot Sport for the 2001 season, but he had a largely difficult season; only on asphalt-rallies was Auriol able to be quicker than his teammate,
Marcus Grönholm. Auriol's only win that year came in Spain, whereas he scored three third places at Sanremo, Corse and Australia. 2002 was a kind of gap year for Auriol, and for 2003, Auriol signed with
Škoda Motorsport, and played a notable part in the development work of the Škoda Fabia WRC. Auriol is a six-time winner of the
Tour de Corse, a record jointly held with
Bernard Darniche. == WRC victories ==