1983 Race of Champions

The 1983 Race of Champions was a non-championship Formula One race held at Brands Hatch on April 10, 1983. It was also the last non-championship F1 race to be held in the sport's history. It was won by the reigning world champion Keke Rosberg in the Williams FW08, who narrowly beat Danny Sullivan in his Tyrrell. Former world champion Alan Jones finished third in his last drive for Arrows.

Entry
Only thirteen cars were entered for the event, compared with the maximum grid of 26 starters which took part in the World Championship Grands Prix of. The teams who did not attend, or only sent one of their two cars, were at a scheduled Formula One tyre test at the Paul Ricard Circuit in the south of France in preparation for the French Grand Prix which was held just one week later.

However, there were two drivers present who did not take part in that year's championship: Brian Henton, who drove a Theodore, and Hector Rebaque, who drove a Brabham. The Spirit team also made its F1 debut at the event with Stefan Johansson and Honda's first turbo-charged F1 engine, which BBC commentator Murray Walker claimed had completed thousands of miles of trouble free testing. Tyrrell fronted with only one driver. Michele Alboreto was scheduled to race, but it clashed with his drive for Lancia at Monza in the World Endurance Championship. Instead his rookie team mate, 32 year old American Danny Sullivan, was given the opportunity to get more miles under race conditions having only completed in the previous two Grands Prix in Brazil and Long Beach. McLaren fronted with a car for John Watson, fresh from his victory in Long Beach just two weeks earlier. Arrows fronted with two cars, one for World Champion Alan Jones in his second (and final) drive for the team after making a comeback to F1 at Long Beach, and team driver Chico Serra.

Eleven teams took part, but only Arrows and Theodore entered more than one car. Brabham elected not to use either of its regular drivers Nelson Piquet or Riccardo Patrese, hence Rebaque's presence (he had driven for the team in ). Like Alboreto, Patrese was driving for Lancia at Monza, while Piquet was advertised to be driving but was actually at the scheduled test in France, so Brabham fronted with Rebaque instead (which drew criticism from BBC commentator and World Champion James Hunt who questioned why they couldn't have put an up and coming British driver in the car for a British domestic race). Lotus used the event as an opportunity to familiarise Nigel Mansell with the Lotus 93T and its turbocharged Renault engine it had so far limited to its other driver Elio de Angelis. Of the thirteen cars, four were turbos including the Ferrari of René Arnoux, although with the Lotus-Renault still new, Brabham without a regular driver and both Spirit and Honda making their debut, only Arnoux was rated a chance of victory among the turbos.

Qualifying
Williams driver Keke Rosberg took pole position, replicating the result at the previous year's British Grand Prix, also held at Brands Hatch. René Arnoux was less than one tenth of a second behind in his Ferrari, and Alan Jones took an encouraging third place in his continuing comeback from retirement with Arrows. Behind John Watson's McLaren, Sullivan qualified in fifth place despite suffering from jet lag, as he had only arrived in the United Kingdom from the United States the day before the track action began. The two Theodore drivers proved evenly matched in sixth and seventh, with Henton outpacing regular driver Roberto Guerrero. Mansell qualified eighth with his first taste of a turbo engine in competitive conditions; he was followed by Raul Boesel in the Ligier, Rebaque's Brabham and Chico Serra in the other Arrows. Johansson set the second-fastest time in untimed practice, but suffered reliability problems in qualifying proper, restricting him to a single lap and 12th place on the grid in a difficult début for the Spirit team, but he still lined up ahead of Jean-Louis Schlesser, who failed to record a lap time for RAM March. The Spirit Honda again proved its speed in the race morning warm-up where Johansson reportedly was among the quickest on the circuit with times within one to two seconds of Arnoux's turbocharged Ferrari.

Race
Rosberg (driving the teams test car which was also serviced by Williams' testing crew as a reward for their work) and Arnoux held their grid positions off the line, but Sullivan rose to third place after being given a nudge under braking for the first corner, the extra momentum forcing him into overtaking Jones around the outside instead of hitting him. Johansson was the first retirement after four laps, the new Honda engine failing on its F1 début. Johansson had made a good start and had passed four cars before the Honda engine started to smoke going into Dingle Dell on lap 4 while chasing Rebaque. After a quiet first start with turbo power, Nigel Mansell ended his race with handling difficulties two laps later.

On lap seven, Arnoux pitted for new tyres, his Ferrari wearing its rubber extremely quickly despite cool ambient temperatures (Arnoux also had major tyre troubles in practice and was lucky not to damage the car after blowing a rear tyre at speed on the run to Clearways). By lap 23 and two further stops, his team had no further sets of tyres and he was forced to retire with camshaft trouble, although he had set the fastest lap of the race as consolation. Watson retired with a bad driveline vibration, while Rebaque retired with tyre and suspension failure in a car he wasn't totally comfortable with (in commentary, Murray Walker claimed that Rebaque looked at sea in the powerful Brabham-BMW). Serra's car broke its gear linkage also retired from the race.

At around half-distance of the forty-lap race, Rosberg also began to suffer from tyre wear, particularly blistering to his left-rear. Sullivan was using a softer-compound set of tyres, but had "scrubbed" them in the pre-race warm-up and had no such problems. For the final fifteen laps, he was right behind Rosberg, but never managed to overtake the Williams. Despite running side-by-side at places on the last lap, Rosberg held on to win from Sullivan, with Jones half a minute behind in third. Henton, Boesel, and the lapped Schlesser and Guerrero completed the finishers.

Rosberg would later add the championship Monaco Grand Prix to his victory haul in 1983, but the other finishers would not approach their results at this race in any other F1 Grand Prix in 1983. As the World Championship had become ever-more important in the scheme of Formula One, the 1983 Race of Champions remains the final non-championship race to have been held in the sport's history.

Race

 * Fastest lap: René Arnoux, 1:17.826 (lap 18).