The 1982 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 36th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1982 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1982 Formula One World Championship for Constructors, which were contested concurrently over a sixteen-race series that began on 23 January and ended on 25 September. The Drivers' Championship was won by Keke Rosberg and the Constructors' Championship by Ferrari.
Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck later wrote that the 1982 season was "an ugly year, pock-marked by tragedy, by dissension, by greed, and yet, paradoxically, it produced some of the most memorable racing ever seen". It started with a drivers' strike at the season opener in South Africa and saw a partial race boycott as part of the ongoing FISA–FOCA war at the San Marino Grand Prix. Two drivers lost their lives during the season: Gilles Villeneuve during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix and Riccardo Paletti at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. Later, championship favourite Didier Pironi suffered a career-ending accident while qualifying for the German Grand Prix. These incidents and several other major accidents led to regulation changes to increase driver security for 1983.
Rosberg won only one race all season – the Swiss Grand Prix – but consistency gave him the Drivers' Championship, five points clear of Pironi and John Watson. Rosberg was the second driver to win the championship having won only one race in the season, after Mike Hawthorn in 1958. Eleven different drivers from seven different teams won a race during the season, with no driver winning more than twice; there was also a run of nine different winners in nine consecutive races from the Monaco Grand Prix to the Swiss Grand Prix. Ferrari, who replaced Villeneuve with Patrick Tambay and Pironi with 1978 World Champion Mario Andretti, managed to score enough points to secure the Constructors' Championship, finishing five clear of McLaren with Renault third.
Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck later wrote that the 1982 season was "an ugly year, pock-marked by tragedy, by dissension, by greed, and yet, paradoxically, it produced some of the most memorable racing ever seen". It started with a drivers' strike at the season opener in South Africa and saw a partial race boycott as part of the ongoing FISA–FOCA war at the San Marino Grand Prix. Two drivers lost their lives during the season: Gilles Villeneuve during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix and Riccardo Paletti at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. Later, championship favourite Didier Pironi suffered a career-ending accident while qualifying for the German Grand Prix. These incidents and several other major accidents led to regulation changes to increase driver security for 1983.
Rosberg won only one race all season – the Swiss Grand Prix – but consistency gave him the Drivers' Championship, five points clear of Pironi and John Watson. Rosberg was the second driver to win the championship having won only one race in the season, after Mike Hawthorn in 1958. Eleven different drivers from seven different teams won a race during the season, with no driver winning more than twice; there was also a run of nine different winners in nine consecutive races from the Monaco Grand Prix to the Swiss Grand Prix. Ferrari, who replaced Villeneuve with Patrick Tambay and Pironi with 1978 World Champion Mario Andretti, managed to score enough points to secure the Constructors' Championship, finishing five clear of McLaren with Renault third.
