Ronnie Peterson caught the speed bug from his father, Bengt, a Swedish baker who raced in his spare time.
With the “Robardie”, his racing kart, he became well-known across Europe. In 1966, he raced for the world championship, but Susy Raganelli had the best of him. He went from the go-karts to the F3, with a car prepped by Peterson, but which wasn’t competitive. The first prestigious results came in ’68 when he became the Swedish F3 champion with the team Tecno, which confirmed him for the ’69 season.

March confirmed him as their official driver for three consecutive years: in F2 he had no rivals and in 1971, in F1, he came second in Monaco, Italy, United Kingdom and Canada. In ’73, he chose Lotus out of the different teams because “it was a winning team”. Not everything went the right way, he hardly ever completed races and there were a few misunderstandings with Fittipaldi. The new season and new team partner, Ickx, but it wasn’t a year of great conquests and in 1975, Chapman broke off the agreements.

He went back to March, he had a not very lucky ’76, even if his victory in Monza was one of the most spectacular in his careers. Yet another team change, even if things didn’t go better with Tyrrell, it was a season marked by withdrawals and exits from the road. In 1978, he went back to Lotus, which met the requirements that he was looking for: “I want a car which goes as if on rails and I like to push it to the top. To win…” At the start of the Monza GP tragedy set in. The accident’s dynamics haven’t been clarified, but they will never be able to give us back the master at steering the other way!