There was a time in the mid-1970s when Rupert Keegan, who has died aged 69 after a long battle against cancer, was hailed as the next James Hunt. The similarities were obvious: they both started out with a habit of crashing Formula Ford cars, then rose rapidly through the single-seater ranks to Formula 1 and enjoyed the playboy lifestyle. Sponsorship from gentleman’s magazine Penthouse and Durex only added to the image in Keegan’s case.
Another parallel was that they both took their first steps at the pinnacle of the sport with Hesketh, Hunt in 1973 and Keegan four years later in ’77. But whereas future F1 world champion Hunt’s career kicked on, Keegan’s never did.
The British team, now with ‘Le Patron’ Lord Alexander Hesketh taking a back seat, was a shadow of its former self. Keegan had a strong debut season, qualifying for all 12 of the races he entered at a time when multiple cars didn’t make the cut. But it would turn out to be the pinnacle of a stop-start F1 career that continued until 1982.
He subsequently drove for Surtees in 1978, racing both the TS19 and the TS20, and undertook partial seasons with RAM, racing a privateer Williams in 1980 and then in ’82 for its March Grand Prix incarnation. He would start 25 grands prix in total without troubling the scorers.
But Keegan was a race winner in F1, and a champion, too. He triumphed in the 1979 Aurora-sponsored British F1 Championship, undoubtedly the strongest season in its short three-year history. When his Arrows-Cosworth A1 finished, it won, with the exception of a dramatic championship finale at Silverstone broadcast live on TV. Second place was enough to give him the title by just two points.
It was meant to kick start his career in F1 proper, but a further 12 participations with the RAM Racing-run Williams-Cosworth FW07 over the second half of 1980 and then five in one of its March 821s two years later after Jochen Mass retired from F1 yielded just a further seven starts.
Keegan was racing full time in sportscars in ’82, undertaking a largely unsuccessful season in the World Sportscar Championship with a works-run Lola-Cosworth T610 alongside good friend Guy Edwards, who had found the sponsorship for Keegan to graduate to F1 in ’77. Together they would go on to finish fifth at the Le Mans 24 Hours the following year driving a John Fitzpatrick Racing Porsche 956 with the team owner. Keegan took the finish with a Heath Robinson repair to the brakes after caliper failure in the closing minutes.
A fuller campaign the following year with JFR and a 956 and then the first 962 to race in Europe followed. Keegan notched up a trio of podiums at Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Mosport, Edwards and Thierry Boutsen among his team-mates.
There was a switch back to single-seaters in CART Indycars for 1985. But his Stateside career stretched to a trio of starts with the Machinists Union team in year one and then a non-qualification at the Indy 500 in ’86 with Gohr Racing. Keegan’s career was pretty much over.
Keegan was an underachiever in F1. He had arrived after winning the premier British Formula 3 title the previous season in another contentious finale. He and season-long rival Bruno Giacomelli, starting side-by-side on the front row, had a coming together before they reached the first corner. With neither scoring, Keegan was crowned champion.
Years later in his Autosport ‘Race of my Life’ he would admit that he was never going to give an inch: when they made contact Keegan kept his foot hard on the throttle to ensure they both ended up in the barriers.
When he pitched up at Hesketh at the start of the European season, the team thought they had a new star on their hands.
“We really thought Rupert had a big future in F1,” recalls Dave ‘Beaky’ Sims, team manager at Hesketh that season. “He was very positive and always up for it, and you have to remember that that year’s Hesketh started out as no more than an average car. And there was no development at a time when things were changing fast in F1.”
The high points for Keegan in his debut season of F1 include a provisional fifth on the grid at Silverstone for his home race, though he slipped to 13th after failing to improve in second qualifying. At a very wet Osterreichring a month later, he was on course for a points finish in sixth when he spun four laps from home and ended up seventh.
Sims worked with Keegan again through his Aurora campaign as TM of the BS Fabrications squad that run his Arrows under the Charles Clowes Racing banner. An F1 veteran who had worked with Jim Clark at Lotus is surprised to this day that the triumph over Wolf-mounted David Kennedy didn’t kick start his F1 career.
“Rupert was up against some good drivers and it was always very close and, of course, there were just a couple of points in it at the end,” says Sims. “We all thought that a big F1 team would snap him up.
“That’s what he needed, a proper team to guide him and knock him into shape. I really do think Rupert had the talent and should have gone a lot further than he did. His problem was that he never looked to the future; he always lived for the moment. That was Rupert - he liked to have fun.
“Technically he wasn’t very forthcoming; his feedback wasn’t very good. You’d say that he appeared to be struggling in this corner or that corner, and his response would be, ‘Oh, it’ll be alright’.”
Keegan didn’t particularly enjoy testing. He famously missed a test during his Aurora campaign, claiming that his car had broken down en route. Sims has no doubt that his no-show was the result of some high-jinks the previous evening.
Keegan started racing in the Ford Mexico one-make tin-top series 1973, winning his debut race. He quickly progressed to single-seaters in Formula Ford, driving a Hawke DL11 with backing from his father Mike, a wartime RAF crew member who operated an airline out of Southend airport. British Air Ferries decals would adorn many of his son’s racing cars.
He graduated to F3 in 1975 driving the March-Toyota 743 with which Brian Henton had dominated British F3 the previous year and then started ’76 with the same car. It was meant to be a stop-gap prior to the arrival of a new Hawke F3 designed by Adrian Reynard, who had been recruited after Mike Keegan took over the marque. The DL18 wasn’t a success and was ditched after only one race and the season completed with a Chevron B34.
Keegan made two attempts to revive his racing career after his unsuccessful sojourn in CART. He took part in a two Indy Lights races in 1992 and then returned to sportscars in 1995.
A couple of appearances in early-season Global Endurance GT Series rounds at the wheel of Porsche machinery were followed by his third Le Mans start. He raced for the returning Lister marque with its Storm GT1 class contender, having originally been slated to drive the British-built Lamborghini Jota that was withdrawn in the run-up to the event.
Keegan’s final race starts came at the Goodwood Revival where he was an irregular competitor between 2013 and ’19.
