Accident
On lap 22, the Shadow car of Italian driver Renzo Zorzi retired from the race with engine failure and moved off the track on the left side. Moments after the car came to a halt on a blind brow, the engine caught fire. Reacting to the emergency, two fire marshals carrying fire extinguishers ran across the track to put out the blaze as the race continued. At that very moment, Pryce in the other Shadow car and Hans-Joachim Stuck driving a March-Ford car suddenly crested the rise. Stuck's leading car swerved, narrowly missing the first marshal, but Pryce, who was unsighted behind the German, had no time to react before hitting the second marshal, Frederick Jansen van Vuuren, who was killed instantly.
At the moment of impact of the car with the marshal, the fire extinguisher that Jansen van Vuuren had been holding smashed into Pryce's head, cracking the driver's hard-shell helmet. The impact tore off the remnants of Pryce's protective helmet and caused the chin strap to almost decapitate the driver. The Shadow car then continued down the main straight at speed with Pryce still seated behind the wheel. The car finally left the track at the first corner taking the Ligier of Jacques Laffite out of the race in the process. The entire incident was filmed by a broadcast crew covering the race.
Jansen van Vuuren's injuries were so severe that, initially, his body was only identified after the race director had summoned all of the race marshals and Van Vuuren was not among them; his body was literally torn in half, with multiple parts scattered around the track.
Read more about this topic: 1977 South African Grand Prix
Famous quotes containing the word accident:
“Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.”
—Augusta Evans (1835–1909)
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)