Grand Prix by Will Buxton

Author:Will Buxton [Buxton, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Races 204 /// Wins 23 /// Podiums 60 /// Poles 24 /// Fastest Laps 23

Keke

Rosberg

1x champion

Born in Sweden and raised in Finland, Keke Rosberg might have looked like the bass player from a Eurovision disco-pop band, but his driving style was pure punk rock. Lurid, wild, at the absolute limit, taking every risk, he was the chain-smoking poster boy for racing on the edge. And while he may have won few Grands Prix in his career, there remain a great many Formula 1 drivers who won more races but never achieved the towering heights of the world championship. Rosberg was never anything but exhilarating—the perfect driver to bridge the divide from 1970s-era glam into a 1980s racing culture of brute force.

Keijo Erik Rosberg was born in 1948, and he had a taste for cars from before he could remember. He raced karts as a toddler and became a multiple Finnish, Scandinavian, and European champion. Despite his clear talent, however, recognition came late, winning in Formula Vee and Super Vee in his late twenties and making his Formula 1 debut after some Formula 2 runouts shortly before turning thirty. His early years in the sport were steady but unspectacular; he ran a succession of poor cars for teams that were either going nowhere or running out of money and time. By the 1981 season, it looked as though Rosberg, like the dogged teams he raced for, was destined to be a footnote in Formula 1 history. But when Alan Jones retired at the end of the season, Williams had an empty seat and a lack of options. It handed the drive to the only racer who’d shown promise and who was, most importantly, contractually available.

And so, despite never having won a Grand Prix in his life, Keke Rosberg lined up for Williams in 1982. The season was bookmarked by tragedy, but so too by a competitive convergence of the field that could have seen any one of six or more drivers take the crown. Rosberg won just a single race, his first in Formula 1, at the Swiss Grand Prix (which, ironically, was held in Dijon, France). But with consistently strong results across the season, and as his rivals took points off one another and struggled to match his consistency or his car’s reliability, that one victory was all he needed. He was, quite incredibly, world champion.

As the turbo era began and Williams fell back from the front, Rosberg somehow stayed competitive by extracting superhuman times from cars that should not have been able to contend. When Williams finally got a turbo engine deal, Rosberg drove so fast he scared even himself, recording a 160-mph average at Silverstone, the fastest lap in F1 history at the time.

Although nobody but Rosberg knew it, 1986 would be his final year in Formula 1, and he chose to see out his career at McLaren. He only recorded one podium in that last season, but by then he’d had enough. He retired to focus

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