Gunnar Nilsson's heartbreakingly short F1 career that bore a great legacy

In the 1970s racing drivers did everything later in life than they do nowadays — and, with the tragic exception of dying of cancer at the devastatingly tender age of 29, almost exactly 45 years ago, on October 20, 1978, Gunnar Nilsson was typical of his time.

Having driven a few minor races in his native Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nilsson made his first serious foray into racing in 1972, in Swedish Formula Vee, when he was already 23. He learned his craft quickly that year, winning a Vee race at Mantorp Park, in south-east Sweden. In 1973 he progressed to Super Vee, driving a Lola to third place in his first race in the series, and finishing fifth in the championship. In 1974 he raced a customer March-Toyota in European and British Formula 3, more often in and faring better in the former than in the latter, perhaps partly as a result of fatigue caused by sleeping on the floor of then Autosport editor Ian Phillips’ bachelor pad in west London whenever he was in the UK. In 1975 he was offered a works March-Toyota to drive in British F3, by now not only the world’s foremost F3 series but also the premier launchpad to Formula 1, and he dominated it, winning five races and the championship. Towards the close of the year he also tackled the tail-end of the British Formula Atlantic season in a Chevron-Ford, winning the last five rounds of the series, four of them from pole position.

Not surprisingly, F1 folk began to take an interest in the dashing Swede, and Frank Williams gave him an F1 test at Goodwood. He did well, and Williams offered him a drive for 1976. However, at that time Frank was far from being the F1 grandee that he would soon become, and indeed his alliterative nickname then included a prefix ahead of his surname rhyming with ‘banker’. Moreover, as skint as he always was in those days, he asked Nilsson to help fund the F1 drive he had offered him, with the result that Gunnar turned it down, instead opting for a paid works Formula 2 drive with March.

Was Lotus becoming something of a laughing stock? To be honest, yes, it was indeed

Some F1 insiders, racing journalists and armchair critics thought Nilsson had made the right decision; others did not. But it mattered not, for luck was on his side. In those days the F1 season used to start in South America in January, long before the F2 and F3 seasons had begun, and, in Brazil, Ronnie Peterson, embarking on his fourth straight year as a works Lotus F1 driver, was so unimpressed by Lotus’s new 77, which he qualified 18th, a chasmic 4.69sec off James Hunt’s McLaren M23 pole time, that he wandered down to March’s garage to see whether he could blag himself a drive for his old mates there instead. The next day, when Peterson collided with his Lotus team-mate Mario Andretti within a few laps of the start of the Brazilian Grand Prix, he had done with Lotus and a solution was quickly found: an immediate Swede swap. March would run Peterson in F1 and in return Nilsson would be released from his March F2 contract in order that Lotus could run him in its unloved new 77 instead. So it was that, less than four years after having made his single-seater debut in lowly Swedish Formula Vee, Nilsson was suddenly and unexpectedly a works Lotus F1 driver, following in the wheel tracks of such luminary world champions as Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi.

He scored points again at fearsome Nürburgring Nordschleife (fifth), at daunting Osterreichring (third) and at soaking-wet Fuji (sixth). In 1977 he would race Lotus’s new 78 ‘wing car’. Now 28, popular, confident and regarded by plenty of pundits as a potential future world champion, the boy from Helsingborg, south-west Sweden, had arrived. Moreover, in 1977, Lotus’s new ‘wing car’ flew – and Nilsson scored points with it at Interlagos (fifth), Jarama (fifth), Zolder (first), Dijon (fourth) and Silverstone (third). His Zolder win was a particularly impressive maiden grand prix victory, scored as it was on a wet then drying track, despite an unscheduled pitstop to replace a wickedly vibrating wheel nut that dropped him behind Niki Lauda’s Ferrari 312 T2, requiring him to catch and pass the maestro to take the lead, which he duly did. Joining Nilsson and Lauda on the podium was Peterson, third in his six-wheeled Tyrrell, delighted for his fellow countryman.

Yet after his Silverstone podium, Gunnar’s form faltered. Indeed, he failed to finish any of the last seven grands prix of the year, and he was outqualified by Andretti for all of them, often by a mystifyingly large margin. Towards the end of the season it was announced that Peterson would rejoin Lotus alongside Andretti for 1978, while Nilsson would become number-one driver for the new Arrows team, alongside the promising young Italian, Riccardo Patrese. However, concerned about his diminishing powers, in December 1977 Nilsson booked a medical check-up in London — and the news was not good. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He immediately underwent a course of intensive radiotherapy, but it was too late. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 1978 season, as Andretti and Peterson were winning race after race for Lotus, and Patrese was making a name for himself at Arrows, Nilsson never got any better. Soon he lost all his hair, followed by a huge amount of weight, and, realising that he would never race again, he resigned his Arrows drive.

On September 10, 1978, Peterson was injured in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He died in hospital the next morning. Despite being painfully weak, Nilsson flew from London to Stockholm to attend his friend’s funeral, which was held in Ronnie’s home town of Orebro, a lengthy car journey from the Swedish capital, and the trip sapped Gunnar’s strength further. Nonetheless, now back in London, he continued to work hard to establish his Gunnar Nilsson Cancer Treatment Campaign, refusing pain-killing meds in an effort to maintain energy and focus sufficient to see it launched properly. Just over a month later, on October 20, 1978, confined to bed in London’s Charing Cross Hospital, and now so sick that he was no longer able to refuse powerful pain-killers, he was visited by many well-wishers. By nightfall, only three remained. They were all F1 journalists: his old flat-mate Ian Phillips, Fredrik Af Petersens and Chris Witty.

Chris is a good friend of mine. Just before I wrote this column he and I shared a WhatsApp exchange. I will leave you with the last two messages that he wrote in our exchange: “Just after midnight he passed. He was on a mega dosage of morphine by then. I remember the end quite clearly. The ward was silent – a total contrast to earlier in the day, when many came to see him. Fred, Ian and I just sat there, waiting for the end. Thankfully it came.”

Then, five minutes later: “He was a very good friend, and much missed still. His memory remains in the form of the cancer unit at Charing Cross Hospital. One of the old doctors who looked after him told me that cancer patients who are treated there still make donations, even now, after hearing Gunnar’s story.”