People

Keijo “Keke” Rosberg

Robert Newman
After struggling through his first two seasons of Formula One, Rosberg joined the Fittipaldi team for 1980, where he managed a pair of top-five finishes with this Fittipaldi F8. Photo: Maureen Magee

Keke Rosberg was a kind of motor racing Cinderella Man. He went from the drudgery of retiring or not even qualifying a stream of uncompetitive cars to becoming the 1982 Formula One World Champion the minute he had reliable machinery with which to lay his talent bare.

I first met Rosberg on a cool April day after he had beaten the crap out of everybody in the 1979 European Formula Two Championship race at Hockenheim, Germany. He was a no nonsense straight talker then and nothing was going to change him as he raced his way toward the 1982 world title and beyond. He remains just as decisive now, as he runs his own German Touring Car Championship (DTM) brace of Audis and steers his son Nico through the early stages of his young life in the sport.

Main Topic Hubs

Join The Community

Become A Member

 

Members only$29 / year

Keep going. This is where it gets good.

Supercars.net Membership is for people who'd rather know the spec sheet by heart than skim ten headlines. The rest of this story — and every other one like it — is a few seconds away.

  • Thousands of members-only stories

    Deep dives, driven reviews and the full archive back to 2005.

  • No ads. None.

    The whole site reads like a magazine, on every device.

  • Every car, every spec

    Twenty years of models, numbers and history in one place.

  • 30% off the shop

    Every Supercars.net shirt and piece of merch, all year.

Join Supercars.net — Keep Reading

$29 a year. Cancel anytime, no hoops.
Already a member? Sign in

BY CAR PEOPLE, NOT A NAMELESS MEDIA COMPANY. Your membership keeps a small independent team that celebrates the brands and cars that defined this industry doing this.

Join — Keep Reading $29/yr