Keke Rosberg recalls setting the fastest F1 lap of all time

During a break in the weather Rosberg climbed aboard his FW10, bolted on his first set of sticky qualifiers, and set out to improve on Friday’s pole time. Despite the tricky conditions, it was clearly an impressive lap, but at Woodcote – in those days still a fast flick of a chicane – he had a big slide.

It took a few seconds for the time to register on the monitors, but he’d done it; 1min 05.967sec, just breaching the 160mph mark. When he got back to the pits Keke discovered that his front left tyre had all but deflated, which at least explained that moment on the final corner.

Others went out and tried, but only Piquet’s 1min 06.249sec came close. Some, including Senna, couldn’t better their Friday times; indeed as the session drew to a close nobody had beaten Keke’s first day pole, so the Williams man held the top two times. But evidently that still wasn’t enough. With just a few minutes to go he slipped on his helmet and set off again on his second set of qualifiers.

“Patrick Head said ‘We don’t really need to’, and I said ‘Give me the tyres, I want to go out again.’ I was just on a high.”

So was the car that good?

“It must have been good if it was so enjoyable! There wasn’t pressure, I was on pole anyway. So it was pure enjoyment. And I’m glad that somebody like Patrick or Frank would sometimes allow you to enjoy yourself. I don’t know if the current system would allow it, but in those days it was acceptable.”

Some corners were still a little damp, but this lap was something special; a 1min 05.591sec, good for 160.925mph.

“Stowe, Club… it was just fantastic. I can remember coming out of Woodcote with a completely blistered left rear, hardly able to keep it on the road any more in the last corner. But I beat my own time.”

Keke denies that records were on his mind that day.

“Not really that consciously, but we knew that we were quick. You knew that you were travelling really fast, and that’s what it was about. The statistics came after. Setting a 160mph lap wasn’t the target; our target was to get the pole with the first set, and with second set have some fun.

“I remember Niki Lauda criticising me – what was the point and all that? I felt that there has to be some fun left in driving racing cars. It can’t be all mathematics and numbers, you know. It was one of those days when driving the car was just tremendous fun. At the same time I knew that professionally, you shouldn’t get carried away, you shouldn’t have fun, you should just concentrate on the job. The left hand said it was great to have fun, the right hand said you shouldn’t do that.”

The left hand won on the day. The result was a standing ovation as Rosberg toured back to the pits for the inevitable drag on a cigarette. But while the public was delighted, Keke says the reception back at the garage was a little cooler.

“They never said a lot. Frank would smile a little bit out of the corner of his mouth. I think it’s one of the things missing from F1; there isn’t this backslapping and saying, ‘We enjoyed that.’ When you see other forms of racing, there’s more of that. But then they probably don’t work as intensely and in as well-controlled an environment as F1.”

For Rosberg, Sunday was one of anti-climax. Senna put the Lotus into the lead at the start, and later Keke lost second to Prost before slowing and retiring with a turbo failure. Curiously, after two in a row, Rosberg would get no more poles that season.

It was two years before the F1 cars returned to Silverstone. By then Keke had retired and a new ‘left-right’ had been added before Woodcote. In theory the Finn’s record was safe, but such was the pace of development of the turbo cars that Piquet’s pole for Williams was a pretty impressive 159.267mph. In later years the circuit would change beyond recognition and lose its place as F1 ‘s fastest track. Despite the FIA’s ongoing attempts to slow circuits and rein in car technology, the 160mph barrier did subsequently come under threat from two of Keke’s old rivals although not in Northamptonshire. In 1991 Senna hustled his McLaren-Honda around Monza in 159.951mph, while in ’93 Prost managed 159.822mph at the same venue for Williams-Renault. The accidents of the following spring sounded the death knell for such average speeds.

“It’s a shame we don’t have tracks like the old Silverstone,” says Keke. “I can understand that the game has been made safer and safer. Professionalism has increased in all areas, and it should increase in safety too. Of course a lot of changes have taken place, and it’s good that it’s so. But back then driving F1 was not only about the millimetre work to make a good time, it was also about challenging yourself in fast corners.”