Rosset had a promising junior career. He was competitive in British F3, and finished runner-up in the International F3000 Championship (the forerunner to GP2/F1) in his debut season in 1995. But for whatever reason, his F1 career just didn’t work out. His first season in 1996 was unremarkable, and 1997 was a write-off after the Mastercard Lola team collapsed.
In 1998 he signed for Tyrrell, a team heading into its final season. But before he’d ever started a race he’d angered people – Ken Tyrrell was so unhappy at the decision (he wanted Jos Verstappen) that he quit the team as a result.
Things weren’t going well and at Monaco, they got really bad. He was struggling to get within the 107 per cent time needed to qualify and so went out for one final crack at it towards the end of the session and well… this happened, prompting an absolutely savage line of commentary from Martin Brundle.
Yup – he locked up at Mirabeau and reversed right back up the circuit, and then after getting going again, he span at the Swimming Pool. Being so close to the end of the session, the yellow flags actually ended up ruining quite a few people’s laps, too. Rosset found little solace from his own team, either – angry mechanics switched the first and last letter of his name around on his paddock scooter to spell… well, you figure it out. Rosset saw out the rest of the season (where he failed to qualify five times in all) but that was it for his F1 career.
