Keke
Rosberg

Keijo Erik Rosberg, known as Keke, was born on 6 December 1948 in Solna, Sweden, and grew up in Finland. He began in karting and moved on to Formula Vee in 1972. He became Finnish champion in 1973 and won the German Formula Super Vee championship in 1975. From 1976 to 1979 he raced in the European Formula Two Championship.

He made his Formula One debut in 1978, aged 29, for Theodore at the South African Grand Prix. In his second race for the team he won the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, an event that did not count towards the World Championship. He spent the rest of that season with ATS as well. In 1979 he joined Wolf, taking over from the retired James Hunt from the French Grand Prix onwards. From 1980 he drove for Fittipaldi and scored his first championship points with a podium finish at the opening round in Argentina. In 1981 he failed to score.

In his first year at Williams in 1982 he won the Swiss Grand Prix, which was held at Dijon-Prenois in France. At the final race of the season he clinched the title by five points from Didier Pironi, becoming Finland's first World Champion, and he did so with just one win in the year. In 1983 he won at Monaco and took the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, while Williams struggled in the transition to the turbo era, and he finished fifth in the standings. In 1984 he won at Dallas and ended the year eighth. In 1985 he won at Detroit and in Adelaide, took pole position in France and Britain, and finished third in the championship. His pole lap at Silverstone, at an average of 259.01 km/h, was the fastest lap yet driven in Formula One and remained so until 2002.

In 1986 he moved to McLaren, where team-mate Alain Prost won the title. Rosberg did not win a race, took pole position in Germany and finished sixth in the championship. In the last race of the season in Australia he was leading when a rear tyre burst and he stopped the car. His Formula One career ended with 114 starts, five wins, 17 podiums and five pole positions.

After Formula One he drove the Spa 24 Hours in 1989 and raced for Peugeot in the World Sportscar Championship in 1990 and 1991, winning races there. From 1992 to 1995 he competed in the DTM for Mercedes-Benz and Opel and was a race winner in that series too. In the mid-1990s he built up Team Rosberg, which later won titles in German Formula Three, Formula BMW, the DTM and Extreme E. He also managed JJ Lehto and Mika Häkkinen, and until 2008 his son Nico. Keke won at Monaco in 1983 and Nico in 2013, making them the first father and son to win there. In 2016 Nico became World Champion, and they were the second father and son to win World Championships after Graham and Damon Hill.

Source: Wikipedia, “Keke Rosberg”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.