PefCrash: Tom Pryce, Jansen Van Vuuren Accident Of Formula One - 1977 South African Grand Prix

Ambrosio’s support increased for the next event – the South African Grand Prix, raced at Kyalami on 05 March. The team’s cars were relivered on Ambrosio’s colors, white with two blue longitudinal bands, and both drivers now had DN8 models at their disposal. The DN8 was far from being amongst the best Formula 1 chassis, but on the first practice session - on Wednesday, held under wet conditions – Pryce clearly demonstrated his innate talent, setting the fastest time a full second ahead of the rest of the field, which included drivers of the caliber of James Hunt, Jody Scheckter, Niki Lauda and others.

Pryce eventually qualified fifteenth for the race, with Zorzi five places further behind. At the start of the race, though, Tom’s car had fuel pick-up problems and he saw himself as a backmarker at the end of the first lap. He quickly came to grips with the Shadow, and over the next eighteen laps he overtook no less than eight competitors, moving up to thirteenth place. Pryce then got closer and closer to a group of drivers made by Hans Joachim Stuck, Jacques Laffite and Gunnar Nilsson, dicing fiercely with them. In the meantime Zorzi, running behind this pack, experienced an engine failure on his number 17 Shadow at the exit of the Leeukop turn. Having lost power, the car slowed down and Zorzi pulled it to the left of the track after the high speed Kink that preceded the start/finish line. As Zorzi was leaving the cockpit of the Shadow an oil leak developed, and car began to catch fire. Zorzi had at first trouble leaving the cockpit, as the cables connected to his helmet did not released when he pulled them.

Two young marshals who were working at the entrance of the pitlane were given instructions to cross the track and put out the fire in Zorzi’s disabled car. One of them was Frederick Jansen van Vuuren, a 19-year-old booking clerk at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg. The young man, with no previous experience in racing, was delighted to be a fire marshal at such an important event.

The Kink was located on a crest, so the location of Zorzi’s car was not clear to drivers approaching it. Also, Formula 1 race cars passed that zone at some 280 km/h while drivers were focused on the right side of the track where the signaling boards placed by the team mechanics were shown, making even more difficult to the other racers to spot the Shadow. As the marshals crossed the track with fire extinguishers two cars came over the crest, with Zorzi’s team mate Pryce, in the DN8 - Ford number 16 slipstreaming Hans Joachim Stuck's March 761B – Ford. Coming upon the marshals at very high speed as he closed the twenty-second lap, Stuck was just able to swerve all too-slightly, avoiding the first marshal and barely missing hitting the second. Pryce, running close to Stuck, was not so lucky, as there was no time for him to react. The Shadow hit van Vuuren, flailing him into the air and killing him instantly. The forty-pound (about 18.2 kg) fire extinguisher that van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce in the face, killing him upon impact as well.
Pryce’s out-of-control Shadow, with its front damaged, carried on along the downhill start/finish line. The car veered to the right and, scraping the barriers, continued to develop some 250 km/h. It crossed the track at the Crowthorne Bend at the end of the straight and collected Jacques Laffite’s Ligier JS7 – Matra; the two cars went over a 50-meter run-off area and crashed violently against the fences and a wall at the outside of the turn. At first Laffite, who was uninjured, was annoyed by the accident and left the Matra to argue with Pryce, but immediately stopped once he noticed Pryce’s lifeless body in the cockpit of the white and blue machine.

The race was not stopped after the horrific accident. The fire extinguisher carried by van Vuuren also tore the roll bar off of Pryce's car, and a fragment of this piece lodged itself in Lauda's Ferrari 312T2 side radiator. Lauda, however, managed to win the race in spite of the increase in his car's water temperature. That was his first Formula 1 victory seven months after his near fatal accident during the 1976 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Pryce's death was noticed during the podium ceremony.

During his 42-race Formula 1 career Tom Pryce obtained two podium finishes, scoring 19 points and setting one pole position. Pryce was survived by his wife Fenella, known as “Nella”. Following Tom’s death Nella managed an antiques store in Fulham with Janet Brise, Tony's widow. She moved to France, never re-married.

Less than two weeks after Tom Pryce’s fatal accident, the Formula 1 circus lost another prominent figure, when José Carlos Pace was killed in a air crash in the vicinity of São Paulo, Brazil, on 18 March.