Stefan Johansson

Stefan Johansson - 8 September 1956 - Sweden

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 This cheerful Swede had all the right credentials when he finally graduated into F1 with the fledgling Spirit-Honda team in the summer of 1983. A successful kartist, winner of the 1979 British F3 championship and an F1 pacesetter, Johansson was quick, brave and obviously talented.He was also immensely unlucky and, despite spells with Ferrari and McLaren, he never quite got it together for long enough to adore that elusive F1 victory. When Honda switched their engine supply contract to Williams for 1984, Johansson simply filled in as best he could, accepting occasional guest outings with Tyrrell and Toleman. In the Italian GP, standing in for the suspended Ayrton Senna, he brought the Toleman home in a fine fourth place on the strength of which he earned the number one drive with them for 1985. Just when it seemed as through he was poised on the threshold of success, the lack of a tyre contract prompted Toleman to shelve their programme. However, Ferrari created a timely vacancy when Rene Arnoux was dropped from the line - up and Johansson took his place.He ran competitively throughout 1985, finishing a strong second in both the Canadian and US Grand Prix. But Ferrari's competitiveness would wane dramatically through 1986 so a succession of mechanical problems and sheer bloody misfortune made it almost inevitable that he would be replaced - Gerhard Berger was the man who took over from him. Stefan then picked up the prestigious number two McLaren ride alongside  Alain  Prost  for  1987 ,  but  this  was  just a  question of  keeping  the  seat   warm  for  Ayrton  Senna  who duly succeeded him in 1988. From then on it was downhill almost all the way via Ligier, Onyx and AGS to a quiet retirement in Monaco .

. Derek Warwick

Derek Warwick - 27 August 1954 - Britain

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  This son of a Hampshire agricultural trailer manufacturer was regarded as a more certain bet for Grand Prix honours than Nigel Mansell in the early 1980s. At the start of 1984 he seemed tipped for stardom as he succeeded Alain Prost as Renault team leader.Race wins were regarded as a certainty and some even whispered about the possibility of Warwick winning a World Championship. At last he had the equipment to run consistently at the front of the field - or so everybody thought. Neither of those eventualities worked out, but since those fleeting halcyon days with Renault in early 1984, when victory seemed just round the corner, Warwick has continued to hammer on the doors of success with a ferocity and determination of Mansell-type proportions. Moreover, Warwick's universally sunny disposition made him enormously popular in a business where ego can be a destructive force. Encouraged by his father and uncle, who jointly founded the family trailer- building business, Derek was a stock car champion on dirt ovals when little more than a child. Graduating with honours from Formula Ford, he made it into the closely fought world of F3, All the while being financed by his family, and raced competitively against Nelson Piquet to win the 1978 British National Championship.His career path progressed through into F2 where he forged a bond with the Toleman team, spearheading their ambitious graduation into Grand Prix racing along with Brian Henton in 1981. He gave Toleman three loyal and determined years before switching to Renault in 1984, only for the French team's fortunes to plunge in 1985 when the company withdrew from F1. He returned to F1 with Brabham after the death of Elio de Angelis and then switched to Arrows from 1987 to 1989, driving with characteristic determination all the while but seldom scoring any worthwhile results. A switch to Lotus- Lamborghini for 1990 was even more disastrous and F1 abandoned him at the age of thirty-six at the end of that season. He turned to a Sports Car World Championship programme with Jaguar in 1991 and stayed in that category leading the Peugeot squad in 1992. A devoted family man who lives in Jersey with his wife Rhonda and daughters Marie and Kerry, Warwick was, by common consensus, one of the outstanding F1 protagonists to slip through the net without registering the success his talent so obviously deserved.

. Nelson Piquet

Nelson Piquet - 17 August 1952 - Brazil

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  Having made a name for himself on the domestic Brazilian Formula Super Vee scene, Nelson embarked for Europe at the start of 1977 to launch his international F3 programme. Driving a Ralt, he would finish third in that season's European Championship before switching his attentions to the British scene the following year. In 1978 he won a total of thirteen races, clinching the BP Championship and attracting a great deal of attention on the part of F1 team managers. Nelson's Grand Prix debut came at Hockenheim in 1978 at the wheel of an Ensign and he also handled a private McLaren M23 in the Austrian, Dutch and Italian races. In the last race of the season he drove a third works Brabham- Alfa as a preliminary to joining Niki Lauda in the Bernie Ecclestone-owned team the following year. Niki Lauda's sudden - and, as things transpired, temporary - retirement from F1 late in 1979 elevated Nelson to the position of Brabham team leader. The following year he won his first Grand Prix at Long Beach with the Cosworth V8-engined Brabham BT49, following this up with further successes in the Dutch and Italian races. His novice status notwithstanding, he finished runner-up in the championship behind Alan Jones.The following year Nelson duly bagged his first world title, edging out an over-tense Carlos Reutemann in a sweltering finale under the scorching Nevada sun in Las Vegas. Then, for 1982, Brabham switched to BMW turbo power, heralding a mechanically troubled year and only a single win for Nelson. But his shrewd commitment to the Brabham-BMW development programme reaped dividends in 1983 when he snatched his second championship title in a down- to- the-wire battle with Renault's Alain Prost. Two relatively bleak seasons followed this success and, frustrated by Brabham's fruitless switch to Pirelli rubber in 1985 and Ecclestone's reluctance to pay him what he believed to be his market value, Piquet stunned the racing world by switching to the Williams-Honda camp for 1986. He almost won the title again in his first year with Williams, blaming his failure on the team's unwillingness to encourage Nigel Mansell to play a supporting role, something which quite clearly was not part of either man's contract. Being edged out by Prost for the championship in the very last race clearly irked Piquet enormously, even though his tactical approach would continue to pay off as he eased through to take his third title in 1987.He was no happier with the Williams modus operandi, however, and moved to Lotus in 1988, a switch which contributed to Frank's team losing its Honda engine supply contract as well as being the beginning of the end for Nelson's own front-line F1 career. Even with a Honda V6 turbo engine, Nelson found the Lotus 100T hopelessly uncompetitive as compared with the world-beating McLaren MP4/4s. Things were even worse when the team had to use Judd V8s the following year after Honda withdrew their engines. Nelson was reduced to the role of a midfield runner at best. In such a situation, his motivation suffered. Two years with Benetton in 1990-1 saw Piquet revelling in an Indian summer, notching up a total of three wins. When the car was on the pace, he would do just what was needed. But he was approaching forty now, with more than a decade of F1 competition already under his belt. By the end of 1991 the offers from top teams were no longer coming his way and he did not need them. He was not prepared to drive for peanuts and turned away from F1 to try his hand at the 1992 Indianapolis 500, in practice for which he was involved in a serious accident, suffering extensive foot injuries which almost certainly spelled the end of his racing career.

. Keke Rosberg

 Keke Rosberg - 6 December 1948 - Finland

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  When Alan Jones took the decision to retire abruptly at the end of the 1981 season, the Williams team faced a major problem recruiting a successor to the brilliant Australian. Eventually Williams signed up 'Keke' Rosberg, the Swedish- born Finn who had established a spectacular reputation in the lower echelons of the sport, but who had been hampered by the lack of a competitive car while serving out a two-year stint in the under-financed Fittipaldi F1 team.Rosberg's early experience had been gained in Formula Vee single-seaters, and he gradually worked his way up the international motor racing ladder, scoring a significant victory in streaming wet conditions at the 1978 Silverstone International Trophy meeting. The Finn's lightning reflexes and tremendous wet- weather skills were highlighted in this performance at the wheel of the Theodore F1 car. Even though Keke had achieved this success in his second F1 race, he vanquished opposition of only a modest standard and his triumph could be regarded mainly as an interesting pointer to possible future form. Happily for the Williams team, Rosberg had lost none of that instant flair by the time he started the 1982 season armed with a competitive car. At one stage it seemed as though he might become the first World Champion to take the title 'on points' without scoring a single Grand Prix victory, but he squeezed in a good win at the Swiss Grand Prix and clinched the title after beating off a challenge from Ulsterman John Watson in the final race of the year at Las Vegas.The Williams team was late picking up the threads of turbo engine development and had no such powerful unit available in 1983. Nevertheless, Keke managed to reward them with a brilliant victory in the Monaco Grand Prix. Gambling correctly that the rain-slicked track surface would dry out quickly, he started the race on slick tyres and out-ran the more powerful opposition in an awesome display of raw car control. He failed to win another race that season, but by dint of some heroic motoring kept the naturally aspirated Williams within sight of the turbos on all but the fastest circuits. Rosberg was armed with turbo power at last in 1984, thanks to the Williams- Honda alliance. He fought an uphill battle against the all-conquering McLaren- TAGs, but gave the Williams team its first turbo-charged win in the one-off Dallas Grand Prix. As most of his front-line opposition slid into the walls or collapsed with heat exhaustion beneath the boiling Texas sun, Rosberg kept his cool to notch up probably his most impressive victory of all. At the start of 1985 Keke was distinctly apprehensive about the prospect of Nigel Mansell joining Williams as his team- mate.With characteristic openness, he voiced these reservations, but later acknowledged that he had been too hasty in reaching such a judgement. He won at Detroit and Adelaide, but then decided to switch to McLaren in 1986 for one final stab at the title. That final season was a disappointment. 'I thought I was the fastest driver in the world until I went to McLaren with Alain Prost,' he would later remark. No wins came his way, but the chain-smoking Finn did not reverse his decision to retire. He kept away from racing for almost four years before signing to drive for the Peugeot team in the Sports Car World Championship. He did a full season in 1991 before switching to drive an AMG Mercedes-Benz 190E2.5 in the 1992 German Touring Car Championship.

. John Watson

John Watson - 04 May 1946 - Britain

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   John's father was a successful Belfast motor trader who bankrolled his son's racing up to the level of F2, in which he competed for three years (1969 to 1971) in family owned Lotus and Brabham machinery.By 1973 he was ready for F1, making his Championship debut in the British GP at Silverstone where he drove a Brabham BT37. He drove for the Hexagon Brabham F1 team, backed by prosperous Highgate motor trader, Paul Michaels, throughout 1974 and scoring his first Championship point with a sixth place at Monaco. In 1975 he briefly drove for Team Surtees before switching to the new F1 operation established by American millionaire Roger Penske, taking the place of his original driver Mark Donohue who had died of brain injuries sustained when a tyre failure caused him to crash during the race morning warm-up prior to the 1975 Austrian GP. Watson would earn the team a superb victory in the following year's Austrian Grand Prix.After Penske withdrew from F1 at the end of the 1976 season, Watson switched to the Brabham-Alfa squad for two seasons during which he was unable to reproduce that winning form. In 1979 he moved to McLaren as team leader when the position fell vacant after Ronnie Peterson's death at Monza the previous September, but his high hopes were dashed when the new McLaren M28 proved disastrously uncompetitive. John's self-confidence was also somewhat undermined by the not-always sympathetic strictures of team manager, Teddy Mayer. Only when Ron Dennis and his colleague John Barnard became involved with McLaren did the team's fortunes pick up dramatically, and Watson proved to be the initial beneficiary of this upsurge when he won the 1981 British Grand Prix at Silverstone in the Barnard-designed carbon fibre chassis McLaren MP4. In 1982 and 1983, Watson found himself psychologically overshadowed by the reappearance of his former Brabham team-mate Niki Lauda as his partner in the McLaren line-up. Nevertheless, John drove outstandingly to win the 1982 Belgian and Detroit GPs and the 1983 Long Beach event before the suddenly available Alain Prost replaced him in the McLaren F1 line-up for 1984. Apart from a single guest outing for McLaren at Brands Hatch in 1985, that was the end of Watson's F1 career.A perfectionist in the complicated business of 'setting up' a chassis, if he was unhappy about his machinery, then he was frequently less than inspired. But when he hit top form he could display World Championship potential. As an individual, his personality remained unspoiled throughout his F1 career.

Elio De Angelis - 26. March 1958 - Italy / died 15. May 1986 in Marseille /

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  Elio de Angelis drove racing cars with the same natural fluidity, feel and precision as he played classical music on the piano. He was twenty years old when he made his F1 debut at the wheel of a Shadow DN9B in the 1979 Argentine GP at Buenos Aires, but by that stage the team was in a decline and the promising Italian new boy switched to Lotus at the start of the following year.In 1980 his best result was a storming second place behind Rene Arnoux's Renault in the Brazilian GP at Interlagos, and when his team-mate Mario Andretti moved to Alfa Romeo in 1981, Elio found himself partnered with Nigel Mansell.In 1982 de Angelis made his mark in the history books when he won Lotus's first GP victory since the glorious days of Mario Andretti and the ground-effect type 79 four years earlier.In 1986 he joined compatriot Riccardo Patrese in Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham- BMW line-up, struggling with the complex 'low-line' type BT55.The week after the Monaco GP he journeyed along the Mediterranean coast to Paul Ricard for a routine test session. Going into the 180mph (290kph) flat-out kink beyond the pits, the car suffered a component breakage and crashed heavily. Grand Prix racing's last gentleman player died of his injuries a few hours later in a Marseilles hospital.