page_title: Gunnar Nilsson
section_title: Grand Prix years
hierarchical_section_title: Gunnar Nilsson / Grand Prix years
caption_attribution_description: English: Nilsson Lotus 77 at Brands Hatch
context_page_description: Gunnar Axel Arvid Nilsson was a Swedish racing driver. Before entering Formula One, he won the 1975 British Formula 3 Championship.
  Nilsson entered 32 Formula One Grand Prix races, qualifying for all of them. He won the 1977 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder while driving for Team Lotus. After losing his Lotus seat, he signed for Arrows for 1978, but was later diagnosed with testicular cancer which meant he could not drive the car. However, he did compete in three International Race of Champions races in 1977. He had two sixth-place finishes and a fifth-place finish.
  As soon as the cancer was determined to be terminal, he created the Gunnar Nilsson Cancer Foundation. He died in October 1978.
  Gunnar Nilsson is buried in Pålsjö cemetery in Helsingborg, Sweden, close to his parents Arvid and Elisabeth Nilsson.
context_section_description: In all his Grands Prix, Nilsson only drove for Colin Chapman and his Team Lotus. He got his chance with the famous marque when Jacky Ickx and Ronnie Peterson abandoned ship when the Lotus 76 proved a disastrous replacement for the legendary Lotus 72. The replacement car for 1976, Lotus 77 was promising, meanwhile the team was undergoing big change at the time and Mario Andretti soon replaced Evans, the team was soon back on the way up, with Nilsson taking advantage of Andretti's experience.
  Following Peterson's departure, Nilsson was thrown in at the deep end – racing the Lotus-Cosworth 77 in the South African Grand Prix. His debut was not an auspicious one; he qualified last of 25 drivers, in what was attributed to a bad car, which had caught fire during practice. The next was the non-championship, Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. This was more promising: he started from the second row of the grid and stormed into an immediate lead. However, his race only lasted to lap six, when the Cosworth DFV shed a plug lead. Before the other English non-championship race, the BRDC International Trophy, there was the small matter of the US GP West, around the street of Long Beach, California. He had survived a huge first turn accident, only for his rear suspension to break half a lap later, pitching him into the wall at 160 mph.
  His debut season saw a podium finish at only his third Grand Prix, the Gran Premio de España. He also scored another impressive third place in the Grand Prix von Österreich, fifth in Germany and sixth in Japan, but the rest of the season was marred by accidents – in Belgium, Sweden, and Holland – and by car failures – in Monaco, France, England, and at Watkins Glen.
  For 1977, Lotus retained Nilsson alongside Andretti, and the pair worked on developing the new ground-effect Lotus 78. After a slow start to the season, as Andretti took over his car for the Argentine Grand Prix, Nilsson really got going at Jarama with a 5th place. Two races later, he took a magnificent win at the rain-soaked Zolder. As the race progressed, and the track dried, Nilsson suffered from a vibrating wheel nut, therefore he made a stop to have a tyre change. On these new tyres, he drove around the outside of Niki Lauda's Ferrari with 20 laps to go, to take the lead and stayed ahead to take victory. With further good results at Dijon-Prenois (4th) and Silverstone (3rd) Nilsson climbed the Championship standings. Come Autumn, his performance was blighted by poor qualifying efforts and there was a sudden downturn in his performances, retiring from all the last seven rounds of the Grand Prix season.
  His last appearance in a Formula One car, was at Fuji, where he drove an Imperial-liveried Lotus 78. Nilsson's last race was a lacklustre performance. Towards the end of the season, Nilsson's relationship with Chapman deteriorated to some extent, and with Peterson having signed to return to Team Lotus, he was on the way out at Lotus. By now, he was already experiencing symptoms of cancer. He would finish the season in eighth place with a total of twenty points. He might have scored more points but for a whole catalogue of accidents.
  Nilsson signed to race for Arrows in 1978, in their debut season, but as it happened he did not have the health required to drive the car, and was forced to stand down before the first race. Rolf Stommelen was signed to replace him instead. As Nilsson got weaker, Andretti and Peterson raced to the World Championship.
caption: Nilsson in his Lotus 77, during the 1976 British Grand Prix
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