1982: Dramas and great racing
The 1982 Formula One season featured sixteen rounds. It was a year full of drama, controversy, accidents and exciting finishes, and finally, the Drivers’ Championship went to Keke Rosberg and the Constructors’ Championship to the Scuderia Ferrari.
Picture above: Didier Pironi (Ferrari) winner of the 1982 Dutch Grand Prix, with Nelson Piquet (second in his Brabham-BMW) and eventual champion Keke Rosberg, third in his Williams.
Finn Rosberg (Williams) won only one race during the season – the Swiss Grand Prix at Dijon in… France – but consistency gave him the Drivers’ Championship, five points clear of Didier Pironi (Ferrari) and John Watson (McLaren).
Beginning of August, championship front-runner Didier Pironi suffered a career-ending accident while qualifying for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.
Eleven drivers from seven teams won a race during the season, with no driver winning more than twice. These eleven (!) drivers are: Rosberg, Watson, Prost, Piquet, Pironi, Tambay, de Angelis, Lauda, Arnoux, Patrese, Alboreto.
Reigning World Champion Nelson Piquet won the Canadian Grand Prix in his Brabham-BMW, but could only manage 11th in the Drivers’ standing. What a difference a year makes.
It was a hard and sad season. Two drivers died during 1982: Gilles Villeneuve during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix and Riccardo Paletti at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck later wrote that 1982 was “an ugly year, pock-marked by tragedy, and yet it produced some of the most memorable racing ever seen.”
Picture below: Nelson Piquet and Didier Pironi have a chat, while Patrick Tambay in the background, who replaced the regretted Gilles Villeneuve at Ferrari, analyses some data with his race engineer.
