Keke Rosberg

Keke Rosberg
Born	6 1948 (1948-Template:Pad2digit-Template:Pad2digit) Solna, Stockholm County, Sweden
Died	{{{death_date}}} {{{death_place}}}
Formula One career
Nationality	Finnish
Years	1978–1986

Keijo Erik "Keke" Rosberg (born 6 December 1948 in Solna, Stockholm County, Sweden), is a Finnish former racing driver and winner of the 1982 Formula One World Championship. He was the first Finnish driver to compete regularly in the series. Rosberg grew up in Oulu and Iisalmi, Finland. He is the father of the Mercedes GP driver Nico Rosberg.

Formula One career

Minor teams

Rosberg in the Wolf pits in 1979.

Rosberg had a relatively late start to his F1 career, debuting at the age of 29 after stints in Formula Vee, Formula Atlantic and its antipodean counterpart Formula Pacific and Formula Two, then "feeder" series to Formula One. His first Formula One drive was with the Theodore team during the 1978 season. He immediately caught the attention of the Formula One paddock with a superb drive in the non-Championship BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone in just his second race with the team, emerging victorious after many of the big names had been caught out by a tremendous downpour. Rosberg wasn't able to qualify for a race afterwards, and was signed by another uncompetitive team, ATS, for three races after the Theodore team scrapped its unreliable car design. He returned to Theodore after they acquired old chassis from the Wolf Formula One team, but these were also uncompetitive and Rosberg returned to ATS to end the season.

He next emerged with the Wolf team, midway through the 1979 season. However, the team was having difficulty staying solvent, and Rosberg had problems in finishing races. Rosberg soon had to change teams again when Wolf left Formula One, and signed with Fittipaldi Automotive which had bought the remains of Walter Wolf's squad. He secured his first two point-scoring results in the 1980 season, including a podium, but often failed to finish or qualify; 1981 was worse as he failed to score at all.

The sharp end

Rosberg won the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix in a Williams FW09.

Despite this, Williams was interested in Rosberg, with the retirement of former World Champion Alan Jones leaving a seat open for the 1982 season. Given a competitive car, Rosberg had a highly successful year. He consistently scored points and earned his first victory in the Swiss Grand Prix at Dijon-Prenois late that year. Rosberg's first memorable season came in a year where no driver won more than two races. With Ferrari's season marred by the injuries to Didier Pironi and the fatality of Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder, and the turbocharged Brabham-BMW and Renault cars suffering from poor reliability, consistency won Rosberg the Drivers' Championship, despite using the Ford-Cosworth normally aspirated V8 against turbo-engined rivals.

Rosberg driving for Williams at the 1985 German Grand Prix.

Rosberg's post-championship years would be hamstrung by both uncompetitive chassis from Williams, and the powerful but unreliable Honda turbo engine. The Honda engine began producing regular results just after Rosberg had signed for McLaren in mid-1985. Rosberg's pole position-winning lap at that year's British Grand Prix stood until 2001 as the fastest single lap in Formula One history, at an average speed of 160.9 (258.9 km/h). The Williams-Honda team would go on to dominate grand prix racing through 1987. At the time, Rosberg's move to McLaren for the 1986 season had seemed a master stroke – the team had achieved back-to-back championships in 1984/85. However, the 1986 McLaren was underpowered, and Rosberg was soundly beaten by team-mate Alain Prost (whose smoother driving style seemed to be more effective in the inherently understeering MP4/2C chassis). On top of that, the fatal crash of Elio de Angelis while testing a Brabham in France deeply affected him (Rosberg and de Angelis were close friends) and he retired at the end of the season. He would later claim that he retired "too soon".

After Formula One

In 1989 Rosberg made his comeback in the Spa 24 Hours in a Ferrari Mondial run by Moneytron (cf. Jean-Pierre Van Rossem and Onyx), the same team that gave Rosberg's protégé JJ Lehto his debut in Formula One. Rosberg was a key element of Peugeot's extremely competitive sportscar squad in the early 1990s. But after two years with the marque and varied successes (two victories and a failed attempt at the 24 Hours of Le Mans), he moved on to the German Touring Car Championship, the DTM, driving for Mercedes-Benz and Opel. Here he set up his own team, Team Rosberg, in 1995 and at the end of that year withdrew from driving to concentrate on running it.

Team Rosberg ran for another year in the DTM, until the series collapsed, and has been present in Formula BMW, German Formula Three, the Formula Three Euroseries and A1 GP since. Team Rosberg returned to the revived DTM in 2000, entering two Mercedes. Success, or even just scoring points, became harder with each passing season and Team Rosberg quit the series after their 2004 campaign, only to return in 2006, this time with Audi.

The next generation

Rosberg later spent a long time managing his countrymen JJ Lehto and future world champion Mika Häkkinen. Until 2008, he also managed his son Nico who entered Formula One in 2006 driving for Williams.

Helmet

In his karting years, Rosberg had a white helmet with a blue stripe, then, in F1, Sid Mosca (the designer that designed helmets of Brazilian drivers like Ayrton Senna, Rubens Barrichello and Emerson Fittipaldi) painted Rosberg's helmet white with a blue circle on the top and the stripe was divided in a big blue rectangle covering the visor area with some blue rectangles behind (in a fashion almost similar to Didier Pironi's helmet). In 1984, the rectangles were replaced by a yellow trapezium. His son Nico has a helmet slightly inspired on his helmet (with grey replacing blue and with flame motifs).

Racing record

Complete European Formula Two Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	Pos	Pts
1976	Team Warsteiner Eurorace	Toj F201	BMW	HOC Ret	THR Ret	VAL DNQ	SAL 13	PAU	HOC Ret	ROU 4	MUG 24	PER DNQ			HOC 5		10th	5
	Fred Opert Racing	Chevron B35	Hart										EST Ret	NOG
1977	Fred Opert Racing	Chevron B35	Hart	SIL Ret													6th	22
		Chevron B40			THR NC	HOC 8	NÜR 3	VAL 12	PAU 11	MUG Ret	ROU	NOG 13	PER 1	MIS	EST 4	DON 2
1978	Fred Opert Racing	Chevron B42	Hart	THR Ret	HOC 8	NÜR 2	PAU DNS	MUG Ret	VAL Ret	ROU	DON 1	NOG 17	PER	MIS	HOC		5th	16
1979	Project Four Racing	March 792	BMW	SIL	HOC 1	THR	NÜR Ret	VAL	MUG	PAU	HOC	ZAN	PER	MIS	DON		12th	9

Complete Formula One World Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	WDC	Points
1978	Theodore Racing Hong Kong	Theodore TR1	Cosworth V8	ARG	BRA	RSA Ret	USW DNPQ	MON DNPQ	BEL DNQ	ESP DNPQ										NC	0
	ATS Racing Team	ATS HS1									SWE 15	FRA 16	GBR 17
	Theodore Racing Hong Kong	Wolf WR3												GER 10	AUT NC
		Wolf WR4														NED Ret	ITA DNPQ
	ATS Racing Team	ATS D1																USA Ret	CAN NC
1979	Olympus Cameras Wolf Racing	Wolf WR8	Cosworth V8	ARG	BRA	RSA	USW	ESP	BEL	MON	FRA 9		GER Ret			ITA Ret				NC	0
		Wolf WR7										GBR Ret
		Wolf WR9												AUT Ret	NED Ret		CAN DNQ
		Wolf WR8/9																USA Ret
1980	Skol Fittipaldi Team	Fittipaldi F7	Cosworth V8	ARG 3	BRA 9	RSA Ret	USW Ret	BEL 7	MON DNQ	FRA Ret	GBR DNQ									10th	6
		Fittipaldi F8										GER Ret	AUT 16	NED DNQ	ITA 5	CAN 9	USA 10
1981	Fittipaldi Automotive	Fittipaldi F8C	Cosworth V8	USW Ret	BRA 9	ARG Ret	SMR Ret	BEL Ret	MON DNQ	ESP 12	FRA Ret	GBR Ret	GER DNQ	AUT	NED DNQ	ITA DNQ	CAN DNQ	CPL 10		NC	0
1982	TAG Williams Team	Williams FW07C	Cosworth V8	RSA 5	BRA DSQ	USW 2	SMR													1st	44
		Williams FW08						BEL 2	MON Ret	DET 4	CAN Ret	NED 3	GBR Ret	FRA 5	GER 3	AUT 2	SUI 1	ITA 8	CPL 5
1983	TAG Williams Team	Williams FW08C	Cosworth V8	BRA DSQ	USW Ret	FRA 5	SMR 4	MON 1	BEL 5	DET 2	CAN 4	GBR 11	GER 10	AUT 8	NED Ret	ITA 11	EUR Ret			5th	27
		Williams FW09	Honda V6 (t/c)															RSA 5
1984	Williams Grand Prix Engineering	Williams FW09	Honda V6 (t/c)	BRA 2	RSA Ret	BEL 4	SMR Ret	FRA 6	MON‡ 4	CAN Ret	DET Ret	DAL 1								8th	20.5
		Williams FW09B											GBR Ret	GER Ret	AUT Ret	NED 8	ITA Ret	EUR Ret	POR Ret
1985	Canon Williams Team	Williams FW10	Honda V6 (t/c)	BRA Ret	POR Ret	SMR Ret	MON 8	CAN 4	DET 1	FRA 2	GBR Ret	GER 12	AUT Ret	NED Ret	ITA Ret	BEL 4	EUR 3	RSA 2	AUS 1	3rd	40
1986	Marlboro McLaren International	McLaren MP4/2C	TAG V6 (t/c)	BRA Ret	ESP 4	SMR 5	MON 2	BEL Ret	CAN 4	DET Ret	FRA 4	GBR Ret	GER 5	HUN Ret	AUT 9	ITA 4	POR Ret	MEX Ret	AUS Ret	6th	22

• ‡ Race was stopped with less than 75% of laps completed, half points awarded.

Formula One Non-Championship results

(key) (Races in boldindicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2
1978	Theodore Racing Hong Kong	Theodore TR1	Cosworth V8	INT 1
1979	Olympus Cameras Wolf Racing	Wolf WR9	Cosworth V8	ROC	DIN 6
1980	Skol Team Fittipaldi	Fittipaldi F7	Cosworth V8	ESP Ret
1981	Skol Team Fittipaldi	Fittipaldi F8C	Cosworth V8	RSA 4
1983	TAG Williams Team	Williams FW08C	Cosworth V8	ROC 1

In popular culture

In level 7 game 11 of the popular video game Angry Birds created by the Finnish company Rovio, there is a caricature of Rosberg in a racing car sitting on the year '1982'.

External links

Awards and achievements Preceded by: first winner Autosport International Racing Driver Award 1982 Succeeded by: Nelson Piquet Preceded by: James Hunt BRDC International Trophy winner 1978 Succeeded by: Incumbent Preceded by: Nelson Piquet Formula One World Champion 1982 Succeeded by: Nelson Piquet Preceded by: Gilles Villeneuve Brands Hatch Race of Champions winner 1983 Succeeded by: Incumbent