Louis Rosier
Nation: | France | ||||||||
Automobile world championship | |||||||||
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First start: | Great Britain Grand Prix 1950 | ||||||||
Last start: | 1956 German Grand Prix | ||||||||
Constructors | |||||||||
1950 Talbot • 1951–1954 Scuderia Ferrari • 1954–1956 Maserati | |||||||||
statistics | |||||||||
World Cup balance: | World Cup fourth ( 1950 ) | ||||||||
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World Cup points : | 18th | ||||||||
Podiums : | 2 | ||||||||
Leadership laps : | - |
Louis Rosier (born November 5, 1905 in Chapdes-Beaufort , Puy-de-Dôme department , † October 29, 1956 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Hauts-de-Seine department ) was a French Formula 1 , sports car and Motorcycle racer .
Career
When Rosier started at the first Formula 1 Grand Prix on May 13, 1950 in Silverstone on a 4.5-liter Talbot Lago at the age of 44 , he was already a well-known racing driver in his home country, but because of his relative of old age was no longer courted by the big racing teams.
His victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the same year , where he managed the feat of sitting at the wheel of the vehicle for 23 hours on a Talbot Lago T26GS was legendary - almost unthinkable then as now.
In contrast to many other drivers of his generation, the career of the garage owner and Renault dealership was not straightforward. In 1927 he first competed in motorcycle races on a Harley-Davidson , and later in sports car competitions on a SCAP and Talbot .
During the occupation of France in World War II , Rosier was active in the Resistance as an escape helper for allied airmen who were shot down . After the war, which deprived many racing drivers and athletes of the most valuable years of their careers, he continued to successfully try his hand at sports cars and even won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1949 in the class up to 1100 cc together with his son Jean on completely new terrain. Louis in a Renault 4CV .
When Louis Rosier took fourth place behind the three big "Fs", Farina , Fangio and Fagioli, at the end of the season , experts were surprised. But this result was thanks to his level-headed driving style with the technically inferior vehicle, which had steadily led him into the points and in Bremgarten and Spa-Francorchamps even with third place on the podium.
In the following years, however, Rosier had less luck as a racing driver. In the 1951 season he was only able to finish fourth in the Belgian Grand Prix with the now even more clearly inferior car , which meant 13th place with three points in the final standings. However, he won the rally in Monaco again this year , this time in the class up to 750 cc. By 1954, he tried his hand as some other drivers with the factory team could not keep up, on a Ferrari 500 in the Formula 2 . Here he was able to finish four races victorious. Encouraged by this, he returned to the premier class with his Ecurie Rosier , his old Ferrari 500 and the 625 developed for the new 2.5-liter formula . The latter was usually driven by Manzon or Trintignant , but with the technically increasingly inferior 500, he usually had no chance. In the middle of the season, he competed in a Maserati 250F that Luigi Villoresi had previously driven for the Maserati factory team at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza and bought the vehicle for his Ecurie at the end of the season. However, Rosier only achieved fifth place in 1956, the last year of his career on the Maserati at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring .
Inspired by this partial success, Louis Rosier won the 1000 kilometer race in Paris in Montlhéry on a Maserati a few weeks later together with Jean Behra . On October 8, 1956, on the same route, on a wet track, shortly before the end of the Coupe du Salon , Rosier lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the barriers. Three weeks later, Rosier died in a clinic.
The four-time French sports car champion, two-time Monte Carlo Rally winner and fourth overall in the 1950 season and winner of a Grand Prix that was not part of the world championship , achieved 18 Formula 1 points in his eventful career, given the few races and the point system , which was then driven, should be rated higher than today and which were in the range of the also French racing driver Maurice Trintignant , who was lucky enough to be able to act as a works driver for Ferrari .
Among other things, on Rosier's initiative and through his efforts to get sponsors, the Circuit de Charade was built in his home town at the end of the 1950s . He himself never saw the construction and opening of the race track; it was initially named Circuit Louis Rosier in his honor .
The French President posthumously awarded him the Cross of Merit of his country, honoring a racing enthusiast who was extraordinarily versatile in his modest and cool manner. No other Formula 1 racing driver can boast of having won both Le Mans and the Monte Carlo Rally.
Statistics in the automobile world championship
general overview
season | team | chassis | engine | run | Victories | Second | Third | Poles | nice Race laps |
Points | WM-Pos. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1950 | Ecurie Rosier | Talbot-Lago T26C | Talbot 4.5 L6 | 3 | - | - | - | - | - | 13 | 4th |
Automobiles Talbot-Darracq | Talbot-Lago T26C-DA | Talbot 4.5 L6 | 3 | - | - | 2 | - | - | |||
Charles Pozzi | Talbot-Lago T26C | Talbot 4.5 L6 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | |||
1951 | Ecurie Rosier | Talbot-Lago T26C-DA | Talbot 4.5 L6 | 7th | - | - | - | - | - | 3 | 13. |
1952 | Ecurie Rosier | Ferrari 500 | Ferrari 2.0 L4 | 4th | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
1953 | Ecurie Rosier | Ferrari 500 | Ferrari 2.0 L4 | 7th | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
1954 | Ecurie Rosier | Ferrari 500 / Ferrari 625 | Ferrari 2.0 L4 / Ferrari 2.5 L4 | 4th | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
Officine Alfieri Maserati | Maserati 250F | Maserati 2.5 L6 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||
Ecurie Rosier | Maserati 250F | Maserati 2.5 L6 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||
1955 | Ecurie Rosier | Maserati 250F | Maserati 2.5 L6 | 3 | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
1956 | Ecurie Rosier | Maserati 250F | Maserati 2.5 L6 | 5 | - | - | - | - | - | 2 | 19th |
total | 39 | - | - | 2 | - | - | 18th |
Single results
season | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1950 | |||||||||
5 | DNF | 3 | 3 | DNF / 6 | 4th | ||||
1951 | |||||||||
9 | 4th | DNF | 10 | 8th | 7th | 7th | |||
1952 | |||||||||
DNF | DNF | DNF | 10 | ||||||
1953 | |||||||||
7th | 8th | 8th | 10 | 10 | DNF | 16 | |||
1954 | |||||||||
DNF | DNF | DNF | 8th | 8th | 7th | ||||
1955 | |||||||||
DNF | 9 | 9 | |||||||
1956 | |||||||||
DNF | 8th | 6th | 5 |
Legend | ||
---|---|---|
colour | abbreviation | meaning |
gold | - | victory |
silver | - | 2nd place |
bronze | - | 3rd place |
green | - | Placement in the points |
blue | - | Classified outside the point ranks |
violet | DNF | Race not finished (did not finish) |
NC | not classified | |
red | DNQ | did not qualify |
DNPQ | failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify) | |
black | DSQ | disqualified |
White | DNS | not at the start (did not start) |
WD | withdrawn | |
Light Blue | PO | only participated in the training (practiced only) |
TD | Friday test driver | |
without | DNP | did not participate in the training (did not practice) |
INJ | injured or sick | |
EX | excluded | |
DNA | did not arrive | |
C. | Race canceled | |
no participation in the World Cup | ||
other | P / bold | Pole position |
SR / italic | Fastest race lap | |
* | not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered |
|
() | Streak results | |
underlined | Leader in the overall standings |
Le Mans results
year | team | vehicle | Teammate | placement | Failure reason |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1938 | Ecurie Bleue | Delahaye 145 | Robert Huguet | failure | no oil pressure |
1949 | Ecurie Rosier | Talbot Spéciale | Jean-Louis Rosier | failure | V-belt |
1950 | Ecurie Rosier | Talbot-Lago T26GS | Jean-Louis Rosier | Overall victory | |
1951 | Louis Rosier | Talbot-Lago T26S | Juan Manuel Fangio | failure | Leak in the oil tank |
1952 | Ecurie Rosier | Ferrari 340 America Spyder | Maurice Trintignant | failure | Clutch damage |
1953 | Automobiles Talbot-Darracq | Talbot-Lago T26GS | Élie Bayol | failure | Power transmission |
1954 | Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari 375 Plus | Robert Manzon | failure | Power transmission |
1956 | Automobiles Talbot | Talbot 2500 Sport | Jean Behra | failure | accident |
Individual results in the sports car world championship
season | team | race car | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1953 |
Talbot Club Francia Amigos de la Panamericana |
Talbot-Lago T26 | SEB | MIM | LEM | SPA | ONLY | RTT | CAP |
DNF | 5 | ||||||||
1954 | Equipe Louis Rosier Scuderia Ferrari |
Ferrari 375 Plus | BUA | SEB | MIM | LEM | RTT | CAP | |
7th | DNF | ||||||||
1956 | Renault | Renault Dauphine | BUA | SEB | MIM | ONLY | KRI | ||
107 |
Web links
- Louis Rosier on Louis Rosier ( Memento from April 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- conceptcarz.com: Ecurie Rosier (accessed October 1, 2012)
- Louis Rosier. www.24h-en-piste.com, accessed on March 28, 2020 (French).
- Louis Rosier in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Rosier, Louis |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French motorcycle and automobile racer |
DATE OF BIRTH | 5th November 1905 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Chapdes-Beaufort |
DATE OF DEATH | October 29, 1956 |
Place of death | Neuilly-sur-Seine |