page_title: Keke Rosberg
section_title: The sharp end – Williams: 1982–1985
hierarchical_section_title: Keke Rosberg / Formula One career / The sharp end – Williams: 1982–1985
caption_attribution_description: Keke Rosberg, #6 Williams-Honda won the USGP here and the 9 Championship points that it paid.
context_page_description: Keijo Erik Rosberg, known as "Keke", is a Finnish former racing driver and winner of the 1982 Formula One World Championship. He was the first Finnish driver to compete regularly in the series. He is also the father of 2016 Formula One World Champion Nico Rosberg.
context_section_description: Despite this, Williams was interested in Rosberg, with the retirement of 1980 World Champion Alan Jones leaving a seat open for the 1982 season. Given a competitive car, Rosberg had a highly successful year. He consistently scored points and earned his first victory in the Swiss Grand Prix at Dijon-Prenois late that year (despite being called the "Swiss Grand Prix", the race was held in France due to Switzerland's ban on motor racing in effect since the 1955 Le Mans disaster).
  Rosberg's first memorable season came in a year where no driver won more than two races. With Ferrari's season marred by the death of Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder, the career-ending injuries to Didier Pironi at Hockenheim and the turbocharged Brabham-BMW and Renault cars suffering from poor reliability (and not helped by Brabham continually changing between the Ford V8 and the BMW turbo), consistency won Rosberg the Drivers' Championship, despite his Williams FW07C using the normally aspirated Ford DFY V8 engine which was considered outdated and out-matched against the vastly more powerful turbo cars. Rosberg won the championship with a five-point gap to Didier Pironi, with the latter missing the last four races of the championship due to injuries sustained at the German Grand Prix. Rosberg's 1982 Championship proved to be the last World Championship win for the old Cosworth DFV engine which had been introduced to F1 by Lotus in 1967 (the DFY was a development of the DFV). To celebrate the victory, Frank Williams gave Rosberg two days off from testing and allowed him to smoke in the team mobile home.
  Rosberg's post-championship years would be hamstrung by both uncompetitive chassis from Williams, and the powerful but unreliable Honda turbo engine. For his title defense in 1983, Rosberg was again using the reliable Ford DFY V8. However, by this time, Ferrari, Renault and BMW had got their act together and the reliability of their turbo engines was starting to match their speed and power output. Rosberg still put his Williams FW08 on pole for the opening race of the season in Brazil (where he was disqualified from 2nd place because he was push started in the pits after he was forced to abandon his car in his pit bay due to a fuel vapor fire), and then won both the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch and in Monaco thanks to a choice of slicks at the start when all others started on wets, but it was increasingly obvious that without a turbo charged engine, results would be scarce. To that end, Frank Williams concluded a deal to run the Honda V6 turbo engine in his cars. Honda had come back into Formula One that year with the Spirit team and results had been slow with unreliability, but they were enthusiastic about joining Williams who had a reputation as a Championship-winning team. Rosberg and teammate Jacques Laffite first got their Honda turbos in the season ending South African Grand Prix at Kyalami and immediately the new Williams FW09 was on the pace. Rosberg finished in 5th place to give him 5th place in the championship. During the year, Rosberg earned the title "King of the atmospherics".
  Despite good power from the Honda engines, Williams and Rosberg struggled in 1984 mostly due to the FW09B chassis not being rigid enough to handle the power delivery of the 850 bhp (634 kW; 862 PS) V6. The Finn managed to tame both the car and engine long enough to win the Dallas Grand Prix, but his only other podium for the year was a second at the season opener in Brazil (the 3rd time in succession he finished second in Brazil, but the only one from which he was not disqualified). After a frustrating year he finished the championship in eighth place with 20.5 points.
  In November 1984 following the F1 season, Rosberg, along with fellow F1 drivers Niki Lauda (the 1984 World Champion), Andrea de Cesaris and François Hesnault, travelled to Australia for the non-championship 1984 Australian Grand Prix at the Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne. Rosberg managed to qualify 4th in his Ralt RT4 Ford despite spending most of the day with fellow aviation en
caption: Rosberg won the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix in a Williams FW09.
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