Pedro de la Rosa

Pedro Martínez de la Rosa was born in Catalonia, Spain, on the 24th February 1971 and before competing in F1 he took three championship titles in Japan, winning F3 in 1995 then both the All-Japan GT Championship and Formula Nippon in 1997. His F1 debut came in 1999, scoring a point in his first race and he would participate in 107 Grands Prix (with 104 race starts) for Arrows, Jaguar, McLaren, Sauber and HRT. He was also a motorcycle fanatic who has a very direct relationship with the Repsol Honda Team as his cousin, Alberto Puig, was the team manager. “Since I was little I’ve loved motorcycles. In fact, I started riding motorcycles before going into karts. My first bike was a Montesa Cota 25, although before that I had taken my first steps with a Mini Marcelino that had four wheels so that I wouldn’t fall off. My first accident was also on a motorcycle, when I was only four years old; I was riding with a Mini Marcelino and the throttle jammed. I remember hitting the wall of the garage!”

He started his career in radio-controlled cars and won three consecutive national titles from 1983 to 1985 and was also the European Champion in 1983 and 1984, then runner-up in 1986. Although an unusual way to start, “for me it was not a choice. As a kid I always wanted to go karting but my father said no because his brother died in a road car accident. In fact, my father said the closest to racing I’d ever get was radio-controlled cars. I thought, ‘well, at least it’s a start!’ So, I got into it, took it very seriously, and had a fantastic time.” He then entered karting and raced in the Spanish championship, contesting his first race in 1987 and went on to win his local Championship in Catalonia.

1989 saw a move into single-seaters when he entered the Spanish Formula Fiat Championship and in his first year he took two wins and won the Championship at the end of a seven race season. After this success he switched to Formula Ford for the following year and competed in both the Spanish and British championships, winning eight of the Spanish season’s ten races with the Racing for Spain team and took the Championship. At the end of the year, he participated in the Formula Ford Festival in Great Britain but only finished twelfth.

He drove for the Racing for Spain team in 1991’s Spanish Formula Renault Championship though there were no victories and he finished fourth in the final standings. Continuing with the team the following year in the British and French Formula Renault championships, it proved to be a strong season, winning two of the three French races and three of the twelve British races and took both championships. After his success in Formula Renault, Pedro signed with West Surrey Racing to contest British F3 for 1993 and finished sixth in the Championship, without any race wins or podiums. He also entered the Masters of F3 at Zandvoort and the Macau GP, but crashed at Zandvoort with West Surrey’s Reynard 933 and was ninth with the team’s Dallara F393 at Macau. He continued to race in British F3 the following year but returned to the Racing for Spain team alongside Arias though there was stiff competition in the series and he only finished nineteenth in the standings.

After the disappointing season, Pedro moved to Japan for 1995 to compete in Japanese F3 and he dominated the championship with TOM’s Racing. His engineer, Jun Yamada, said he was “very focused, took his meetings before and after sessions very seriously and had a high accume for analyzing his runs.” Data loggers had been in use in Europe, but had only just come out for use in Japan and “Pedro helped show us how to use them and he spent much time working with the loggers.” He went on to win eight out of nine races that year (there were 10 scheduled but one was cancelled due to bad weather) at Mine, Aida, Fuji, Sugo, Sendai and Suzuka (three). In November he raced the team’s Dallara F395 at the Macau GP and was third, behind Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli.

Remaining in Japan the following year he contested Formula Nippon and the All-Japan GT Championship but there were no victories in either series. He drove for Shinogi Team Nova’s Lola T96/51 in Formula Nippon alongside Norberto Fontana, who won the third round at Fuji. His engineer Hiroshi Kato stated he “wasn’t able to use the same set-up that Norberto had, which was unfortunate..So it was difficult to get podium.” Results through the year included second, fifth and sixth (twice) at Fuji, fifth (twice) at Suzuka, sixth at Tokachi, seventh at Mine and eleventh at Sumo. Paired with Masanori Sekiya for Toyota, results with the Supra included second and third at Fuji and Sendai, fifth in the 300km Suzuka and eighth at Sugo though they retired in the Special GT Cup at Fuji and the 250km Mine. He returned to Macau, this time with Paul Stewart Racing and finished seventh with their Dallara F395.

It was a totally different story in 1997, where he dominated Formula Nippon and partway through the season had already won the Championship. He started with victories in the first two rounds at Suzuka and Mine, was second and third at Fuji and Suzuka, then took victories at Sugo (from pole) and Fuji (from pole plus fastest lap) and second at Mine (and fastest lap). The title was decided with three races to go and then at Motegi he took pole position and the win though his best race was arguably in the penultimate round at Fuji, where he started from seventeenth and eventually finished second, setting the fastest lap in the process. At Suzuka for the last round, he once again dominated from pole and won the championship with eighty two points while the second position driver was on twenty eight. Continuing with TOM’s in the All Japan GT Championship, after racing with Masanori Sekiya the previous year, TOM’s placed him with Michael Krumm in the second Supra for this season. The championship started at Suzuka at the end of March and in wet conditions he qualified fifth but had dropped to eighth after making a poor start. After ten laps he was already in second place and attacking the leader, the Nissan Skyline of Aguri Suzuki and Erik Comas though after Krumm took over he was forced to retire with twelve laps remaining. In the second race, at Fuji, Toyota took the top five positions in qualifying, with Krumm putting the Supra on pole. The race had a couple of safety car starts due to fog but when it came time for the pit stops the team got their strategy wrong. With one more stop, Pedro was third and in the final seven laps the fight was between the two leaders and he had to settle for third place. Sendai’s Hi-Land Raceway saw their first victory, after a fifth place qualifying position. Several Honda NSXs and Nissan Skylines were in the lead from the start but technical problems gradually eliminated them and he was soon in a podium position. Krumm took over and chased down race leader Aguri Suzuki’s Skyline and with two laps remaining overtook him for the lead, which he kept to the flag. Krumm broke the circuit record at the fourth round at Fuji and, coming to the closing stages, they were running second to another Supra but due to a safety car intervention the race ended with those positions having to be maintained to the flag. Going into the penultimate round at Mine it was the SARD that looked set to take home Toyota’s first GT500 title as they had won both races at Fuji and had a sixteen point lead. Pedro/Krumm started fifth but in the early laps the two NSXs slowly pulled away from their rivals though one soon began to have problems and quickly lost time and positions. The other car continued in the lead and it remained in front until the pit stops but after a successful stop, when Pedro got out of the car, he left Krumm in first place. He only had to fend off attacks from Takahashi and went on take the TOM’s Supra’s second victory of the season and overturned a sixteen point deficit into a four point lead heading into the final round. For the last race in Sugo, four cars had a chance to take the title, with Pedro/Krumm leading with sixty seven points, but they only qualified ninth. The race started with a wet track and at the first corner the pole sitting Honda NSX spun and dropped to twentieth but after twenty laps it was back up to fifth. Later, Krumm saw an opportunity to overtake Kageyama for seventh place but as they headed into turn one the two cars clashed under braking and Krumm ended up in the gravel. Kageyama was able to drive away, though his right-rear fender was damaged, which caused complications on their mid-race pit stop and they lost two laps while repairs were carried out. The second Castrol TOM’s Supra (of Sekiya and Suzuki) was leading, with a real chance to come from thirteen points behind to take the GT500 championship, but with six laps remaining, Suzuki spun out on the still damp track and dropped down to fourth. The final part of the race saw more rain and with six laps to go, a Supra took the lead which it kept to the finish line, with the podium including an NSX and a Skyline. After having repairs done on the car, Pedro had returned to the race though could only finish in fifteenth place. Tanigawa drove the Denso SARD car to seventh, which brought his co-driver Kageyama to sixty seven points and tied with Pedro/Krumm. The two Supras had finished the season tied with two wins each and one second-place result but the third place finish at Fuji in May proved the difference and gave the title to Pedro and Krumm.

He then chose to move back to Europe in the hope of finding an F1 drive as he had secured the backing of Spanish oil company Repsol. In January 1998, Pedro was announced as the test and reserve driver for Jordan and worked alongside Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher, attending test sessions and assisting with the development of the car. During the season he attended test sessions at Silverstone, Monza, Magny Cours and Suzuka and his final outing with the team was a tyre test in Suzuka where the team evaluated the new Bridgestone tyres for 1999’s F1 season. There was one outing with NISMO’s Skyline GT-R at Fuji though he and Masahiko Kageyaa were not classified.

With a race seat unavailable at Jordan for 1999, he opted to leave in the hope of securing a full time race seat. He took part in an evaluation test with Arrows, alongside Toranasuke Takagi, and the pair were locked in a four way shoot out in attempting to gain a race seat, with the team’s 1998 line-up of Mika Salo and Pedro Diniz also vying for the seat. “We were testing in Barcelona and I had to go up against the main driver, Mika Salo, to try to do a lap time similar to his. I remember everyone telling me that I must know the circuit very well, as it was my home circuit, but I told them that I hadn’t raced at this circuit since 1991, even though I made my debut there with Formula Renault. I remember that moment with a lot of nerves. Thanks to a great lap time with this car, I was able to race the following year.” At Australia for the first race of the season, both of the Arrows A20s appeared to struggle in qualifying and Takagi lined up seventeenth, with Pedro eighteenth. The race saw multiple incidents, enabling the pair to move up the field rapidly and Pedro was running fourth before being overtaken by Fisichella and Barrichello shortly before the finish. He still took an unexpected point on his F1 debut, with Takagi coming home seventh. Unfortunately his luck did not improve in the following races, having an accident with Wurz’s Benetton in San Marino plus accidents in Austria and Germany and a run of reliability issues forced him out of a majority of the races. He managed to finish only four out of the remaining fifteen races, with eleventh in Spain and France, fifteenth in Hungary and thirteenth in the final race in Japan. Recalling the year he said “Australia was one of the few races we finished. There wasn’t much budget in the team and a series of mechanical failures kept cropping up and we had to take advantage of that first race, with everything new, to score a point.”

Pedro continued with Arrows in 2000, where the team’s A21 was a completely new design by Mike Coughlan and Eghbal Hamidy but only took a handful of points-scoring finishes. The year did not start well as, despite out-qualifying team mate Verstappen in the opening round in Australia, he was sent crashing into the barriers in a violent incident after his suspension failed. Things began to look better in Brazil with an eighth place result but in Spain he was involved in a first lap accident with Alesi’s Prost that took both cars out of the race. He looked set for podium finishes at Hockenheim and the A1-Ring, but lost time after a spin in the former and suffered a gearbox failure in the latter though the strong performances at Hockenheim, plus the European GP at the Nurburgring, saw him score sixth place finishes and take points from both. The team eventually finished seventh in the Constructors’ Championship, with seven points.

From there he joined Jaguar Racing as a test driver in 2001 but was quickly promoted to a race seat, replacing Luciano Burti after the fourth race. Highlights were fifth and sixth place finishes in Italy and Canada, scoring three points and he finished sixteenth in the standings. Unfortunately in his second year with them there were no points scored, with his best results eighth in Australia and Brazil, but both he and Irvine were out after 2002.

He became McLaren’s test driver in 2003, working alongside Alex Wurz and began a long and successful partnership as they worked tirelessly, racking up thousands of test-miles together. He helped the team’s resurgence as it developed the stillborn MP4-18 into the uncompetitive ’19 and then the MP4-20, which would narrowly miss out on the 2005 world championship. He recalled his first meeting at Woking with Martin Whitmarsh and Dave Ryan and said “I knew I was going to be asked technical questions in that meeting, so I went there quite well prepared. I remember sitting down and the first question Martin asked me was, ‘What is your philosophy of modern F1?’ Man, I was preparing for this interview and the last question I could imagine he’d ask me was that one! I thought it was a terrible meeting, a disaster. I couldn’t answer that question, and Dave Ryan was falling asleep during the interview! What a terrible experience. I came back home and my wife asked me, ‘How did it go?’, I said, ‘Forget it, they will never take me…’ A month went by, and they didn’t call me. I kept ringing Dave Ryan, and asking if there was any interest. It didn’t look like there was. And then one day he said, ‘Come and do a seat fitting and we will test you in Jerez. And then we will make a decision.’. I had been karting all the winter and my ribs were really sore. I was a bit afraid that I would go to Jerez with a broken rib or something, and not deliver. So I was a bit afraid about not being fit enough. But it went very well, and that test was fantastic. And I got the job. It was the year of the MP4-17D, and Kimi lost the championship by a few points, mainly because he had a massive engine blow-up in Germany when he was leading. The plan was to introduce the 18 after a few races, but it was very unreliable and had many issues, and it never made it..Alex was the third driver, but he didn’t want to jump into the 18. He had a massive shunt at the first test in Jerez, going flat out in Turn 4… So in fact that was an opportunity for me, because I said I’ll test it. It also helped me to get the respect of the whole engineering team at McLaren. Meanwhile Alex had a simulator sickness, and that also helped me a lot, because he couldn’t do the correlation work, and I could. It was early days for simulators, and it was easy to get sick. I wanted that role and I knew if I got sick like Alex, they wouldn’t take me! The last thing McLaren needed was two drivers who had simulator sickness… The first time I drove a few laps in it I felt terribly bad, but nobody knew. I just held my breath! The second time I jumped in, it was gone. I just worked on it, because it’s very easy to have an initial bad reaction, and then not jump in any more.”

When Juan Pablo Montoya broke his shoulder shortly before 2005’s Bahrain GP, Pedro was called in to replace him and though it was his first race since 2002, he out-qualified teammate Raikkonen and equalled his highest ever grid position in eighth place. Raikkonen started ninth and proved quicker in the race, though Pedro put in a strong drive to finish fifth, only two places behind his teammate. “I never really thought I would get a chance to race until I was asked to do Bahrain in 2005 when Juan Pablo was injured. Alex didn’t fit-the car was built around Kimi and Juan Pablo, and he had a problem with a fire extinguisher bottle that was touching his elbow, so they had to redesign it. So I got the chance. Actually that race was pretty good for me. Don’t forget that it was the qualifying system where there were two sessions, and there was an order of going out on Saturday, and if you hadn’t done the previous race, you had to go first. So I had to qualify on a green track. But I still outqualified Kimi, I was eighth and he was a place behind. And then in the race I finished fifth and I did the fastest lap.” (Coming into 2022, if it remained unbroken, his time of 1:31.447 meant he would still hold the record for 17 years). For the next race in San Marino, he handed over the seat to Wurz to fill in for the still injured Montoya. During this period he and Miguel Angel de Castro co-founded the Drivex School operation, which went on to become a top Euroformula and Spanish F4 team. In 2005 he also combined his testing duties with providing race commentary for Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, though missed it the following year and returned to the microphone in 2007.

Wurz left in 2006 to take a test role at Williams and Pedro was joined by Gary Paffett as a test driver. After Montoya left, he was promoted to a race seat for the last eight rounds and scored in five races. His first race was in France where he qualified eighth, two places behind teammate Raikkonen and he finished seventh. The next race in Germany proved less successful as Raikkonen was on pole while Pedro was back in ninth place on the grid but the race proved frustrating as he retired on the second lap with fuel pump failure. However his luck changed in Hungary, where Raikkonen was on pole with Pedro fourth but the conditions proved to be quite wet and it turned out to be a highly eventful race. Although many drivers crashed and retired, including Raikkonen, Pedro kept his car under control and finished second to record his first podium finish. “Second place in Hungary was fantastic, obviously..There was a safety car when Kimi crashed, and we had just come into the pits. They filled me with fuel to the end, and then it stopped raining, the track dried out, and I needed to change back to dry tyres. I already had the fuel for the whole stint. And Jenson was nowhere with the Honda, and basically with the Safety Car he got back into the hunt, and he won. But we were on the podium, it was a fantastic achievement, and no one can take that away from us.” He continued his strong form in Turkey with a fifth place result but this was followed by a retirement in Italy. Another fifth place came in China but in Japan he was only able to secure eleventh and at his final race in Brazil he took the final points with an eighth place finish. During 2008 he was elected as the new chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association and though he still helped develop the cars, there were no further opportunities to race and he left McLaren at the end of 2009. “My biggest disappointment came in 2008. Until late 2007, when Fernando left the team, there was a very strong chance that I would partner Lewis. And then the team took Heikki Kovalainen at the last second and that really caught me by surprise. It was a low point in my career. I actually thought I had the drive. I even had my hair very short for Ron, but that didn’t work! However, the end of 2008 was one of the highlights of my career at McLaren. After the disappointment of 2007, when we lost the championship by one point, it was fantastic to see Lewis winning in such a dramatic finish to the season in Brazil. It was an incredible moment. I felt in a way that I was driving the car. I commentated on that race for Spanish TV, and I didn’t speak on that last lap, because I was too nervous!”

There followed a drive with Sauber and although he and teammate Kobayashi struggled with reliability problems he finished seven of the thirteen races he started. He was twelfth in Australia but in Malaysia, he failed to even start the race as his car broke down on the way to the grid. Further finishes saw eleventh in Turkey and Belgium, twelfth in the European GP at Valencia, fourteenth in Germany and Italy plus a hard earned seventh place in Hungary (his only points finish of the year) but he was replaced by Nick Heidfeld five races before the end of the season. He also became a test driver for Pirelli, in anticipation for their return to F1 for the 2011 season and he and Romain Grosjean conducted a number of tyre tests prior to the conclusion of the 2010 season with the Toyota TF109 car. After failing to find a race drive for 2011 he returned to McLaren as test and reserve driver and embarked on his eighth season with the team. However at the Canadian GP, Sauber’s Sergio Perez had continued to experience side effects from an accident in qualifying at the previous race in Monaco and reported dizziness and nausea after morning practice. He had passed all the medical checks and had been driving a kart for two days in Mexico but there were risks, with severe consequences, if he had a second accident shortly after a concussion. So with only ten minutes before the second practice session started, Pedro was invited to race for the team. He was still wearing his McLaren overalls, with the sponsor logos masked and Sauber sponsor stickers hurriedly placed on his helmet and the driver change happened at such short notice that the other drivers only noticed when he was in the car, with Sebastian Vettel asking “Why is Perez now wearing a de la Rosa helmet? Isn’t Sergio’s helmet green?.” Despite the car still being set to Perez’s set-up, he qualified eighteenth, and torrential rain in the lead-up to the start meant the race started behind the safety car. The opening forty laps took three hours and twenty minutes to complete and he ran as high as ninth before a red flag suspended the race. The rain halted the race for 2 hours and 4 minutes and he eventually finished twelfth, after having some contact soon after the restart which required a new wing. Perez returned for the following race at Valencia and Pedro returned to McLaren.

His last season came with the Hispania Racing Team in 2012 on a two-year deal but the financially-struggling team folded at the end of the year. In March it was confirmed that he would serve a second stint as the Chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, after having originally served as its Chairman from 2008-2010. The team’s F112 was originally scheduled to complete its first running during the second pre-season test in Barcelona in late February but was delayed due to the car failing mandatory crash tests. In Australia, he and Karthikeyan failed to qualify and Pedro was only able to complete seven timed laps during the race weekend. During the year the team faced serious financial troubles and towards the end of the season was struggling to stay afloat but despite this they had confirmed that they would compete in 2013 if they secured the financial backing they required. However as the season progressed it became more and more evident the team would not compete in the following year and a week after the final race in Brazil, HRT announced their withdrawal from F1. Brazil would be his final F1 race, which had been an eventful, thrilling rollercoaster of a race. “It was unclear if it would rain or not, and I remember being on the drivers’ parade and I was next to Fernando. I said to him: ‘Wow, this is going to be a great race man.’ And he said: ‘Yeah, this is the type of race where one driver will have intermediate tyres, another slicks, and a few with full wets, and we won’t know what’s going on.’ And I thought, this guy is fighting for a world championship and he’s really, really relaxed. He was just committed to having fun no matter the circumstances. During the race it was exactly how Fernando predicted. It was wet, dry, wet, dry. I mean, it was chaotic. I nearly hit Vettel when he spun at the start. Then I remember being overtaken by him. It was just incredible, one of those races where every corner was different in terms of grip, because you didn’t know if it was going to be dry, wet, or semi-wet. I enjoyed it immensely.”

In 2013, he signed with Ferrari as a development driver and in March was confirmed as part of the Spanish F1 commentary team of Antena 3-F1, as one of the lead commentators for the races and it was the first time he had been involved in a commentary role since 2007, with Telecinco. He continued his development driver role with Ferrari in 2014 but left the team at the end of the year and retired from F1. He was involved in 2015-2016 as the pre-season test driver for Formula E Team Aguri and later worked with the Techeetah Formula E team; “I was with Techeetah for two seasons until September 2019 and feel very proud of what the team achieved. At the same time, I had my personal life to balance. I have kids and a wife. I’m also working as an F1 TV commentator in Spain. Every weekend was either a Formula 1 race or a Formula E race. It was a bit too much. Formula E is a fantastic championship, but I needed to slow down.” He also worked with NISMO as a test driver and brand ambassador and in 2022 Aston Martin announced him as their ambassador for their F1 team.