Louis Rosier

Louis Rosier

Nation:	France
Automobile world championship
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 )
Starts Victories Poles SR 38 - - -
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.

The Talbot-Lago T26C driven by Louis Rosier in 1951

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

Commons : Louis Rosier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• 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

1. ↑ ^{a b} conceptcarz.com: Ecurie Rosier