The F1 title winner that was produced with an entirely different plan in mind

By April of 1982, Keke Rosberg must have wondered – but could never have guessed – what was coming next. Thrust from lowly Fittipaldi into a prime Williams seat as replacement for 1980 world champion Alan Jones, who had made a snap decision to walk away from Formula 1, life in a topline team was proving something of a soap opera for F1’s first Flying Finn.

There had been the drivers’ strike he didn’t particularly agree with, at his first race for the team in South Africa; a maiden podium at his second in Rio, which was then stripped away by disqualification 29 days later; a subsequent boycott of the San Marino Grand Prix. Oh, and amid all of that his illustrious 12 GPs-winning team-mate had upped sticks and stalked off without a backward glance after a messy DNF in Brazil. It was enough to make your moustache curl.

Who could have predicted that by season’s end Rosberg, yet to score a pole position or points-paying F1 win beyond his freak Silverstone BRDC International Trophy victory for Theodore in 1978, would be crowned champion of the world? Somehow, that’s what happened, in a grand prix year of high turmoil and tragedy that featured a record 11 race winners from seven different teams spread across the 16 rounds.

Rosberg has this, the perfectly proportioned Williams FW08, to thank for his unlikely rise to F1 immortality. In it, he became the final champion racing a first-generation ground-effect missile, and the last to be powered by the once-ubiquitous Ford Cosworth DFV V8, amid a growing brood of whistling turbos.

The FW08 had a tough act to follow in the form of the FW07, which across a three-year span had carried Williams to its first race wins in 1979, world championships with Jones in 1980, a second constructors’ title in 1981, and in the same year what should have been Carlos Reutemann’s clean sweep in the drivers’ standings – had he not faltered at the last.

The new car was shorter in the wheelbase and for good reason. “The FW08 was intended to be a six-wheeler,” confirms technical director and team co-founder Patrick Head, under whom aerodynamicist Frank Dernie and an engineering team that included Neil Oatley and a youthful Ross Brawn shaped one of the neatest and downright prettiest cars of the era.

That it only raced in the form you see here, with a conventional number of wheels, was down to its six-wheeled weight and then an outlawing rule change driven through during F1’s most poisonously political era. FW08 in the form Williams intended was a victim of its time – of which it also ran out.

While pretty the FW08 was the last of its kind from the first ground effects era

Photo by: Fluid Images

Six wheels wasn’t new, of course. Tyrrell had famously caused a mid-1970s sensation with the ugly but effective P34, in which a doubtful Jody Scheckter won the 1976 Swedish GP and finished third in the world championship.

The following year, Robin Herd at March also experimented with an extra axle – but at the aft instead of four small wheels at the bow, using identically sized ‘fronts’ all round. A lack of funding had stymied development and the March 2-4-0, a term borrowed from railway rolling stock, never raced (in period) despite its apparent potential. Now Williams chose the same rails.

The reason mirrored Tyrrell’s dilemma way back in 1976: how to combat the DFV’s deficiencies in the face of growing opposition. Dernie reckons the Cosworth-to-turbo deficit was “about 160bhp” by 1982 – and Williams didn’t yet have a turbo option to plug in.

Williams began testing the six-wheel concept on an FW07D ‘mule’ in late 1981, with a view to developing the concept through 1982 on the new car

As Head explains: “We were being heavily outperformed by the turbo cars, and until we tied up with Honda [for 1984], we were expecting to carry on with the DFV three-litre for some years. So we sought ways of keeping ourselves competitive.

“One of these routes was to raise the performance of the DFV, and we met with Keith Duckworth in early 1981 to propose a combined Cosworth-Williams development programme. Keith was very direct in declining, so we went to John Judd at Engine Developments and steadily raised the performance of the DFV, by about 50bhp, and these engines powered Keke Rosberg to his 1982 world championship.”

Still, eking more power from an engine that dated back to 1967 wasn’t deemed enough. “We also looked at raising the aerodynamic performance of the car, raising downforce and reducing drag,” continues Head.

The aging DFV engine hamstrung the FW08's full potential

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Critics of Derek Gardner’s Tyrrell P34 had scoffed at his solution because, even if four small wheels at the front behind a full-width clam nose improved drag, the bulbous tyres at the rear diminished any frontal area gains. Equally sized wheels and tyres all round, with the added traction benefits of an extra rear axle and four-wheel drive, was a concept worth reviving – especially in the ground effect era.

“At that time the rear tyres were very large, in diameter and width, and represented about 50% of the total drag of the car,” says Head. “By replacing them with two front tyres in line, we would firstly raise the contact patch area, secondly reduce frontal area and aerodynamic drag, and thirdly also enable the side panels and skirts of the car to run straight back, within the narrower rear tyres, and enhance the aerodynamic downforce generated from the underside of the car. Sliding skirts had been banned, so much effort went into using flexible plastic [polyurethane] skirts of differing stiffnesses.”

A gadget Dernie came up with to measure drag pointed towards the new direction. “One thing that happens all the time is people blame engine power on how fast they are down the straight,” says Dernie.

“But when you do the sums drag makes at least as big a difference, if not more. So half the time the reason somebody isn’t particularly quick down the straight is because they have too much drag rather than not enough power. We looked at it and it was pretty damned obvious that the rear tyres were the big drag thing.”

The new rear end was centred on the conventional car’s rear axle centre line, with the leading rearward axle placed four inches ahead of the regular position with the driveshafts set at an angle. The rearward axle was driven by an additional final drive unit added on to the back of the Hewland transmission.

Williams began testing the six-wheel concept on an FW07D ‘mule’ in late 1981, with a view to developing the concept through 1982 on the new car. As photos of the mule highlight, “a six-wheeled vehicle with four driving wheels at the rear would be very long,” says Head, “so when we started designing the FW08 the chassis was short, with quite an upright driving position and a high fuel tank. This was completely driven by the intention for it to be the chassis of the six-wheeler.”

Winter tests at the end of 1981 with FW07D had confirmed the concept’s pros, despite the extra weight con of the third axle. Jones and test driver Jonathan Palmer drove at Donington Park, Silverstone and the tight and twisty Croix-en-Ternois.

Despite the extra weight the FW07D proved to be nimble

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“We were also designing the transmission and rear suspension, initially with simple rocker upper arms because I wanted to get the car on track quickly as there was some doubt about whether it could be well balanced and negotiate tight bends,” recalls Head. “At Croix-en-Ternois, with its many hairpins, we found that there was no problem with the tight turns, that the car had tremendous traction and was very driveable.

“I don’t think it was why Alan decided to retire at the end of that year!” quips Head (Jones had already broken his shock news to Frank Williams and Patrick, at the Italian GP). “That ‘test’ car was very overweight, about 80kg, which would have made it uncompetitive at most venues. With a complete redesign of the rear, we probably could have reduced weight by about 50kg.”

As Dernie concurs, the need to reduce weight thwarted ambitions to race the car in 1982. But there’s no doubting that it worked. “Once it was clear the driver couldn’t even tell it was a six-wheeler – they used to forget! – it was just quicker, had better traction, less drag, turned in fine and had no more understeer than any other car,” he says.

“Once it was clear the driver couldn’t even tell it was a six-wheeler – they used to forget! – it was just quicker, had better traction, less drag, turned in fine and had no more understeer than any other car” Frank Dernie

The team raced FW07C for the opening three races – incorporating the infamous Kyalami drivers’ strike over a superlicence row, after which Reutemann scored what turned out to be his final points finish in second, with Rosberg fifth on his Williams debut.

Keke was then runner-up to Nelson Piquet’s Brabham in Rio, only for both to eventually lose their results over water tanks that were supposedly fitted to cool the brakes but were actually a ruse to run underweight.

Meanwhile, a troubled Reutemann failed to finish his 146th GP start, and promptly quit. “I have no motivation anymore,” he stated flatly. “Compared with how I felt a year ago, my heart is not in it. For sure, I don’t like these cars.”

The brewing tension between Britain and his native Argentina over custody of the Falkland Islands, which would soon boil over into a short, brutal war, might have been a coincidence – but, given his future as a politician, perhaps it wasn’t.

Reutemann in the FW07C shortly before he quit racing in 1982

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In place of ‘Lole’, Mario Andretti made a one-off cameo in Long Beach, where Rosberg finished second, before Irishman Derek Daly found himself plucked from an uncompetitive Theodore into a Williams as Rosberg’s team-mate for the rest of the year.

They missed Imola as the tiresome FISA-FOCA war reached boycott fever pitch, then returned for Zolder where the stubby four-wheeled FW08 made its debut. It suited Rosberg perfectly. On the same weekend Gilles Villeneuve was killed, Rosberg narrowly missed out on a joyless victory to McLaren’s John Watson.

In Monaco, Daly was among a clutch of drivers who could have taken the victory no one seemed to want, only for his gearbox to seize. At the half-way stage of this traumatic season in Montreal – where poor Riccardo Paletti died after his Osella slammed into Didier Pironi’s stalled Ferrari on the grid – Rosberg was only fifth in the points. Yet the spread of winners crucially meant he was only 13 down on leader Watson.

Keke scored his first F1 pole position at Brands Hatch, only for his DFV to fail to fire before the parade lap. But now destiny slowly started to swing his way. He was third at Hockenheim, where Pironi’s F1 career flew to a dreadful halt after his leg-smashing collision into the back of Alain Prost’s Renault in wet practice.

Then came the Osterreichring, where Rosberg valiantly chased good friend Elio de Angelis, the Lotus just making it to the line half a car ahead and by 0.050s. Still no win – but suddenly Rosberg was just six points off permanently absent championship leader Pironi.

Then at Dijon for the Swiss GP, Rosberg broke the seal with what turned out to be his only victory of 1982. He passed a hobbled Prost with two laps to go and now, with just two races left, found himself topping the standings. Even after a no-score at Monza, Rosberg headed to Caesars Palace with one hand on the world title – which he grabbed with both, via a conservative drive to fifth.

So, one of the strangest world championship victories? Certainly. But that never seemed to bother him… As Head summarises, constructors’ champion Ferrari would have “easily” won the drivers’ title too without the Villeneuve/Pironi tragedies, but instead “it was won by Keke with very low points and only a single win. With the Ferrari accidents and a rather unreliable Renault, and Brabham in their first year with the ‘volatile’ turbo BMW engine, Keke came out on top.”

The Williams team celebrate Rosberg's one and only 1982 triumph at the Swiss GP

Photo by: Sutton Images

As for the six-wheeler concept, that along with four-wheel drive and ground-effect aerodynamics was kiboshed by a new ‘flat-bottom’ rules package confirmed on 3 November that would totally transform F1 for 1983. Williams had still been fighting the Rio disqualification via the French courts, but now acquiesced to foster a new era of “stability and peace” in F1. All that work… it had been a waste of time.

“I think Gerard Ducarouge, then of Lotus, had been campaigning with the FIA against six wheels being permitted in F1, on the grounds of cost,” says Head, “And he was probably right!”

Dernie’s annoyance over the ban has also cooled over the decades. “It had become very obvious to all that our testing was going extremely well,” he reckons. “They all realised that if our six-wheeler was competitive, everyone would have to build one. That would cost loads of money, and also put them at least a year behind us. Simple as that.”

The original FW08 represents the last hurrah for first-generation ground-effect F1 and still remains razor sharp in historic motorsport

He adds that it also might have “opened the floodgates”. “What would have happened next Eight-wheelers? Or ground-effect cars with a string of tiny wheels all the way down the side... It was incredibly annoying at the time because we had put almost no work into anything else for quite some time, both in the drawing office and in the wind tunnel. But if you think about it from a distance it was probably a good thing.”

As for 1983, Williams followed the majority by modifying its current car to the new flat-bottom rules, resulting in the short-sidepod FW08C. In Rosberg’s title year, the DFVs might have been puffing to keep up with the turbos, but they still won half the races. Now during the title defence, the boost really was on the other foot.

But that’s another story. Today, the original FW08 represents the last hurrah for first-generation ground-effect F1 and still remains razor sharp in historic motorsport. Professional racer-turned-classics dealer Sam Hancock has FW08-01 on his books – the car in which Rosberg raced to his third place at Hockenheim, then narrowly lost out to de Angelis in Austria.

This was also the chassis that was then transformed into six-wheeled FW08B form and in which, in 1994, Palmer set a blistering FTD on Goodwood’s Festival of Speed hill in 46.06s. It was converted back to its conventional four-wheeled glory by Williams in 2000.

After the FW07D didn't come to fruition, the FW08 was called into action

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“I absolutely love it,” says Hancock, recalling his experience shaking down the car at Donington. “Within three laps I realised it was a cut above every other DFV-powered F1 I’ve experienced. The reason being, it had absolutely no quirks.

“Sometimes you find cars of that period have, for example, weird mid-corner snap oversteer where the chassis flexes, or a weird inherent understeer you just can’t dial out with set-up changes. But it didn’t have any of that. I was flat through the Craner Curves on a circuit that had only recently dried up, from the second flying lap. It was hugely confidence inspiring, with a sublime balance.”

Gentle inputs, on steering, throttle and brakes, rewarded Hancock with his best DFV-powered F1 experience – and he’s driven his fair share over the years. Modern-day historic racing rules out full ground-effect skirts, but even in compromised form FW08 sticks to the road.

“By just guiding it and letting it flow I guess you are keeping the aerodynamic platform stable, which keeps the ground effect working,” says Hancock. “You just find massive amounts more grip and more speed through apices than you thought was possible.

“The more speed you carry the more the ground effect activates, and the faster you go. Genuinely brilliant. A no-drama car.”

The same couldn’t be said of the 1982 season. Imagine such turmoil playing out today.

Race record

Year 1982
Races 12
Wins 1
Pole positions 1
Fastest laps 0
Key drivers Keke Rosberg, Derek Daly

Specification

Chassis Aluminium honeycomb monocoque
Front suspension Double wishbones, pullrods, coil springs (inboard), adjustable telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar
Rear suspension Upper rockers, lower wishbones, coil springs (inboard), adjustable telescopic dampers, adjustable anti-roll bar
Engine Ford Cosworth DFV V8
Engine capacity 2993cc
Power 500-530bhp
Transmission Hewland/Williams FGB/C six-speed manual
Brakes AP Racing ventilated and grooved discs and calipers
Tyres Goodyear (Avon today)
Weight 585kg

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It doesn't feature highly in the record books, but the FW08 made its mark in the history books

Photo by: Fluid Images