F1 Retro: Setting a smoking lap

F1 Retro August 2005

I kept my foot down – that’s what racing is all about.” So said Keke Rosberg, the moustachioed, Marlboro-smoking racing hero featured in this month’s F1 Retro, who claimed his F1 title at the Caesars Palace Grand Prix 40 years ago this month.

Perhaps the embodiment of motor sport in the early ’80s, the Flying Finn only knew one way to drive – hence his long-standing record of fastest F1 lap ever, clocked at 160.925mph around Silverstone for 1985 British GP qualifying.

However, in the age first of DFVs and then of merciless turbos with ever-increasing horsepower, Rosberg was still calculated in putting pedal to metal, as he explained to Nigel Roebuck in 2005: “I wasn’t fearless, totally on the contrary, in fact,” he said. “I was very aware of the risks involved and tried to minimise them. On the other hand I enjoyed pushing to the limit, so it was always a bit of a conflict – brain said this and heart said that.”

Of the famous lap he said, “It had nothing to do with trying to do a 160mph lap. I was already fastest by half a second, but I had a set of tyres left so, if nothing else, going even quicker would demoralise everyone else. We were racers, after all, so let’s go for it. I was a horse that never needed to be pushed.”

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