Louis Rosier

Louis Claude Rosier (5 November 1905 in Chapdes-Beaufort – 29 October 1956 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a racing driver from France.

The event was the RAC International Grand Prix, the first grand prix to be held in England since 1927.

Rosier finished 4th at Silverstone in a Talbot, in October 1948.

He drove a 4.5-liter, unsupercharged Talbot-Lago to 3rd place at the 1949 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

He was a lap behind the winner with a speed of 76.21 mi/h.

Rosier won an International Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps in June 1949.

He piloted a Talbot in the 500 km, 32-lap event, achieving a time of 3 hours, 15 minutes, and 17 seconds.

He assumed the lead after 23 laps, coming across the finish line ahead of Luigi Villoresi.

He participated in 38 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 13 May 1950.

He achieved 2 podiums, and scored a total of 18 championship points.

He won the Dutch Grand Prix twice in consecutive years between 1950 and 1951, the Circuit d'Albi, Grand-Prix de l'Albigeois and the 24 Hours of Le Mans with his son Jean-Louis Rosier.

Rosier owned the Renault dealership of Clermont-Ferrand.

Rosier won the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans in a blue Talbot.

He teamed up with his son Jean-Louis Rosier who only drove two laps during the race, which means Louis won the race practically by himself.

He finished one lap ahead of Pierre Meyrat who drove a car of the same marque.

The Rosiers covered 256 laps, 2163 mi, in 23:54:2.2.

Throughout the 1950s, Écurie Rosier provided drives in Formula One for Henri Louveau, Georges Grignard, Louis Chiron, Maurice Trintignant, André Simon and Robert Manzon.

Louis Rosier was one of the key sponsors of the Charade race track.

After World War II, Jean Auchatraire (president of the racing section of the local Automobile Club) and Louis Rosier promoted the idea of a race track around Clermont-Ferrand.

A set of preliminary designs were drawn up for a circuit of a length between 4 and 6 km, meeting the latest safety regulations with large parking capacity at a location just outside the city limits on a hilly landscape.

Rosier captured the Grand Prix d'Albi in Albi, France in May 1953.

He drove a Ferrari, covering the 18 laps of the finals, 160 km, in 56:36:8.

He averaged 160 km/h.

Rosier placed second in a Ferrari at a Grand Prix in Aix-Les-Bains, in July 1953.

His time was 2:24:48.1.

The Le Mans disaster (death toll: 84 lives) on 11 June 1955 brought the project to a halt.

All race events were postponed.

No further events were allowed to take place on temporary urban tracks.

Racing events were only to be allowed on dedicated race-tracks, providing that they met a new set of rules.

In Clermont-Ferrand, as was the case for many other new race tracks, new safety devices were being imagined and discussed, reviewed and assessed.

But the concept of a "mountain race track" moved forward.

It would be the only one of its kind in France.

Auchatraire, Rosier and Raymond Roche (the manager of Reims-Gueux race track) worked together to get the project accepted by the political community before searching for funding.

In April 1956 Rosier finished 4th in a Maserati, in a 201-mile race at Aintree.

Stirling Moss drove a blue Maserati to victory in the 67-lap event for Formula One cars, with an average speed of 84.24 mi/h.

Rosier finished 5th at the 1956 German Grand Prix behind the wheel of a Maserati.

Louis Rosier was the owner and manager of a racing team, the "Ecurie Rosier".

Originally set up to run Rosier's Talbot-Lago T26 (for either Rosier or a guest driver), and later evolved to an actual team running 250Fs and finally Ferrari 500s simultaneously for Rosier and another driver.

But Rosier was killed at Montlhéry on 26 October 1956 and would not witness his project come to fruition.

In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modeling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Rosier was ranked the 19th best Formula One driver of all time.