Playboy F1 racer Rupert Keegan billed as ‘next James Hunt’

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…