People

Fredrik Af Petersens

There are not many Swedish aristocrats wandering around the F1 paddock but if the King of Sweden drops by to watch a Grand Prix - as he has been known to do - Fredrik Af Petersens is on hand to make King Carl Gustaf XVI feel at home.

Known throughout the paddock as "Freddy", Af Petersens spends most of his time working as a sports journalist, covering Formula 1 events and golf tournaments. He raced Mini Coopers in the 1960s in Sweden but realized after a run in a Formula Vee open-wheeler that he was not brave enough to be a racer and so he gave up but continued to watch local events. One day, enraged by a local newspaper's lack of motor racing reports, he went to the editorial offices and asked why it did not cover races. They suggested that he do it.

Not long afterwards Freddy met a young racing driver called Gunnar Nilsson in a disco in Helsingborg. He watched him race and realized that he had stumbled on a new racing star. He reported on Gunnar's every move, moving to England with him in 1974 and 1975. It was not easy to survive financially and Freddy ended up at one point working for a Swedish chain store, importing fruit and vegetables. Eventually he decided to take a risk, established himself as a professional motorsport journalist and in the early years was able to survive, writing about the exploits of Swedish stars Nilsson and Sweden's other big star Ronnie Peterson.

Nilsson won the British F3 Championship in 1975 and was signed by Lotus for the 1976 Grand Prix season, as team mate to Mario Andretti. He scored 11 points that year, including third place finishes in Spain and Austria and the following year won his first Grand Prix victory in a rain-soaked Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, driving around the outside of Niki Lauda's Ferrari with 20 laps to go.

At the end of the year Peterson was signed to partner Andretti in 1978 and Nilsson signed to drive for the new Arrows team but around the same time he was diagnosed as having cancer. He died in October 1978, just five weeks after Peterson died in a crash at Monza.

Petersens would late write a book called "The Viking Drivers" as a tribute to his two dead friends. After 1979 he struggled to survive in F1, until Scandinavian interest in F1 was revived by Finn Keke Rosberg and since then he has never looked back. He writes for magazines throughout Scandinavia but lives in Germany, to be closer to the action.