Racing marshals: real heroes who sometimes pay the ultimate price

March 5th 2024

On the anniversary of Tom Pryce's death in the 1977 South African GP, Matt Bishop remembers the other man killed that day: Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, as well as his fellow F1 marshals who lost their lives in the service of the sport they loved

Volunteer marshals on duty at Spa

Florent Gooden / DPPI

The 1977 South African Grand Prix took place exactly 47 years ago, to the day. The headline of Denis ‘DSJ’ Jenkinson’s Motor Sport report was a prosaic one, since it consisted of the five words ‘The South African Grand Prix’. The standfirst immediately below added six more words – ‘Ferrari and Lauda back on form’. In terms of accuracy, neither headline nor standfirst could be faulted, for in both the previous grands prix, which had been run in Argentina and Brazil, Niki Lauda had been beaten by his new Ferrari team-mate Carlos Reutemann. In Buenos Aires, Reutemann had finished third; Lauda had retired on lap 21 with a broken fuel metering unit. A fortnight later, in Sao Paulo, Reutemann had won, beating pole man and reigning world champion James Hunt’s McLaren fair and square; Lauda had finished third, albeit 1min 48sec behind his team-mate. In the six-week gap between Brazil and South Africa, Lauda had been toiling away at Fiorano, working hard to tailor the 312 T2’s handling to his liking, and he had arrived at Kyalami brimming with confidence. He duly won, while Reutemann finished only eighth.

What Motor Sport’s 1977 South African Grand Prix headline/standfirst combo did not disclose, which omission still has the power to shock any modern reader who may stumble across it today, was that on lap 23 a 19-year-old marshal, Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, lifted up a large and heavy fire extinguisher, ran with it across the track to douse Renzo Zorzi’s lightly smouldering Shadow, and, misjudging the time available before the arrival of the other Shadow, which was being driven at full pelt by Tom Pryce, was torpedoed in a violent accident that killed both marshal and driver outright. DSJ revealed that detail on the final page of his lengthy report.

om-Pryce-portrait-in-Shadow-race-suit — Tom Pryce at Brands Hatch in 1974: he’d win there in the Race of Champions the following year

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Pryce was just 27 when he died, yet he had already shown enormous promise, having bagged two grand prix podiums (at Osterreichring in 1975 and at Interlagos in 1976), a pole position (at Silverstone in 1975), and a non-championship Formula 1 win (the Brands Hatch Race of Champions in 1975). He had wondrous natural car control, and he was freakishly quick in the wet. Indeed, on the weekend on which he met his maker, there were four practice sessions, and in the first two it rained heavily. His Shadow was by no means a competitive car in early 1977 — at Kyalami he managed only P15 in it in qualifying when the track was dry, and Zorzi only P20 — but when the heavens opened Pryce topped the time-sheets, opposite-locking his way to a lap time 1.56sec quicker than anyone else’s. It is said that Colin Chapman was in the process of lining him up to be Mario Andretti’s team-mate at Lotus for 1978, a drive that instead went to Ronnie Peterson. Since the 1978 Lotus 79 turned out to be one of the greatest cars in F1 history, and considering Andretti easily won the 1978 drivers’ world championship in it, it is more than likely that Pryce would have won races with it. Indeed, he might then have gone on to enjoy a magnificent F1 career. We will never know.

From the archive

1977 South African Grand Prix race report

Ferrari and Lauda back on form Kyalami, Johannesburg, March 5th The World Championship Formula One scene moved across the southern hemisphere from Brazil to South Africa, for the 78-lap race…

April 1977 Issue

By Denis Jenkinson

I did not meet him – when he died I was just 14 – but those who knew him say that he was a truly lovely man, gentle and self-effacing, his North Wales accent soft and lilting. In the fall-out from the tragedy of Kyalami, a few grief-stricken British journalists could not resist scolding Jansen van Vuuren in print, and in a sense you could not blame them. A marshal’s rash error had killed an innocent, popular and gifted driver, after all. On the other hand the result of his mistake – his own death – was a terrible punishment. And, lest we forget, he was only 19, proud and delighted to be working at a grand prix for the very first time.

During the years in which I have been working in F1, three marshals have lost their lives while on grand prix duty. At Monza in September 2000, 33-year-old Paolo Gislimberti was killed by a wheel that flew off Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s Jordan, which had become entangled in a lap-one shunt at the second chicane. At the time of Gislimberti’s death his wife Elena had been expecting their child. Lisa was duly born in December 2000, three months after her father’s passing. Now 23, she follows Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Alex Albon on Instagram, which I find poignant in the extreme; but it also shows us that, although all lives end, life itself always goes on.

Jacques Villeneuve is led away from a crash at the 2001 Australian Grand Prix by marshals — Jacques Villeneuve walks away from his 2001 Australian Grand Prix crash. Marshal Graham Beveridge did not.

Robert Cianflone/Allsport via Getty

Heartbreakingly soon after that calamity, at Albert Park in March 2001, 52-year-old marshal Graham Beveridge was also struck by a flying wheel, this time one that had detached itself from Jacques Villeneuve’s BAR, which had collided with Ralf Schumacher’s Williams on the approach to Turn 3. The race was won by the elder Schumacher, Michael, who confirmed that Beveridge had died during the post-race press conference. After the deaths of Beveridge and Gislimberti, the FIA decreed that F1 cars’ wheel tethers be strengthened, which regulatory modification was enacted for the following season.

Club Racing News

'Orange family' pays tribute to marshal Robert Foote: 'He was always there for you'

Fellow marshals and close friends from the 'Orange Family' have paid tribute to Robert Foote, killed in an accident at Brands Hatch last month

27th August 2021

By James Elson

Soon after the end of the 2013 Canadian Grand Prix, 38-year-old marshal Mark Robinson accidentally dropped his walkie-talkie radio, stumbled as he stooped to retrieve it, and fell under the wheels of a six-tonne mobile crane that was being used to recover Esteban Gutierrez’s Sauber, which he had spun off the track on lap 64. Robinson was taken to Montreal’s Sacre-Coeur Hospital, where he died later that evening. A little less than three weeks afterwards, on the Friday before the British Grand Prix, the Silverstone marshals organised a minute’s silence in Robinson’s honour, and many of that year’s F1 drivers attended it. When the minute was up, I remember that they all joined in a spontaneous round of applause.

All three tragedies were caused by freak accidents. But then accidents are by definition freaks. Thankfully, deaths of any kind have been very rare in F1 this century, but motor racing will always be dangerous. The drivers who strut their stuff inside the cockpits are daring, but the marshals who guard them are heroic. What is more, they are unpaid volunteers. So, today, yes, please raise a glass in memory of Tom Pryce, who lost his life at Kyalami on this day 47 years ago. But also toast the lad who died with him, Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, and three of his confederates who perished more recently, Paolo Gislimberti, Graham Beveridge and Mark Robinson. Please also remember their families and friends, who grieve for them still. And never forget that if it were not for men and women like them, there would be no motor racing at all.