Talking to the ‘cheapest’ world champion
IT IS A WET DAY AT SILVERSTONE in March of 1978, and the Daily Express Trophy has dissolved into fiasco. James Hunt, Patrick Depailler, Clay Regazzoni, Niki Lauda… all the stars are out, and much of the catch fencing is flat. In the John Player Team Lotus motorhome there are long faces, for Mario Andretti and the new 79 have slithered out of the lead at Abbey, and Ronnie Peterson, too, is out, unhappy with a car hastily refettled after a warm-up shunt. Mario and Ronnie stare out absently through rain-soaked windows. “Who’s leading?” says someone. Colin Chapman thinks for a second. “Ro… Ro… Rosebury?” he ventures…
“That day taught me a lesson,” said recently crowned Formula 1 world champion Keke Rosberg. “I always thought I was going to make it in the end – that was why I took the Theodore drive. I had no backing, and it was the only way for me to get into F1. Eddie Cheever didn’t want the car. OK great, I’ll take it! I even got paid for it.
“So I won my second race in the car, at Silverstone. Does it really matter what the circumstances were? I mean, at least I stayed on the road! Emerson Fittipaldi was second… I was a bit pissed off that Brett Lunger was third [fourth – ed]… but Emerson was second, and I was battling with him for the last few laps. So I thought that things were working out quicker than I expected, but I was in for a big surprise at the end of the season… By then Silverstone was forgotten, and people only remembered the races where I hadn’t qualified.
“OK, I thought, it’s going to take a bit longer. The important thing was to keep busy, drive in F2 here, Can-Am there, a race in Japan, all kind of things. Who knows what they might lead to?”
In fact, Rosberg’s eventual arrival at the top took much longer than he expected. Four seasons with, at best, indifferent Formula 1 cars brought no success. At 33, he was in danger of being passed over.
“Last year, 1981, was the worst of all. I’d been around for a long time, and I was still not qualifying sometimes. Everything was wrong. I tell you, in my last year with Fittipaldi I was terrified. I was a very scared man, and I found that interesting because I didn’t really know why. It wasn’t that I thought the car was bad. It wasn’t a matter of details, although I had two or three suspension breakages. Perhaps it was because we were not achieving anything, either, and the motivation wasn’t there, that feeling that you’re part of the gang in a competitive sense. I wasn’t getting paid, so I had to fight for every penny, with a lawyer to help me. So everything was wrong, and I’ll admit to you that I became bloody terrified. I still don’t know what caused that to happen to me. It took me half a year to forget it completely.”
Working with a car designed driving race cars again. I’ve never understood what the problem was, but I don’t think it showed in my driving, simply because the will was so much stronger than the fear.”
