Former Formula 1 driver and touring car champion Andrea de Adamich passed away earlier this week at the age of 84.
Born in Trieste, Italy, de Adamich was a racer-turned-commentator whose journey carried him from law student to touring-car champion and grand prix driver, as well as respected voice of Italian motor sport.
Originally enrolled in a law programme, it was the gift of a Triumph TR3A from his mother that set him on a quite unexpected trajectory: hill-climbs, single-seater junior racing and then the international stage.
“It was not so much the cars,” de Adamich reflected in an interview with Motor Sport in 2013, “it could have been tennis or skiing. It was more the desire for competition, I wanted to race, to compete wheel to wheel.
“I took the TR3 to some hillclimbs, and enjoyed it. I had some good results, beating the Porsches sometimes, especially in the wet. I looked different from the others. I was studying law and wore glasses, you know, and it was always the results I wanted, not just the taking part.
“It was a big jump from hillclimbs to racing and my mother was not at all pleased to discover I had crashed the Triumph, but I bought a Lola for €1000 and went into Formula Junior. My first race was at Vallelunga in 1963 and Jochen Rindt was there – we became very good friends.
De Adamich (right) made his F1 debut with Ferrari in 1968
Getty Images
“In ’64 I got an engine from the Pedrazzani brothers, who were building the best motors at that time. The Jolly Club also entered me in saloon events, in an Alfa Romeo Giulia, and then the Alfa works team took me on, so I could earn some money to pay for single-seaters. I won the Italian F3 Championship in 1965 in an old Brabham. That was a big moment for me, because I was up against some very good people from Europe.”
De Adamich won the Italian Formula 3 Championship in 1965, driving a Brabham, and the following year joined Alfa Romeo’s works-backed Autodelta squad, capturing the European Touring Car Championship in 1966 behind the wheel of the 1600 GTA, and repeating the feat in 1967.
These triumphs established a deep and enduring link with Alfa Romeo, a brand he later described as being “much more like a family.”
His leap into Formula 1 came via Ferrari. In 1968, he made his championship debut in South Africa, ahead of his more-established team-mates Chris Amon and Jacky Ickx, his qualifying prowess evident in a seventh-place start.
“At Ferrari, Mauro Forghieri treated me as though I’d come from another big Formula 1 team, but I was very inexperienced and he didn’t do much to help me develop,” he recalled.
“He was more interested in Amon and Ickx, and made that very clear. But I was quick in testing at Vallelunga and felt confident in my speed.”
De Adamich switched to March for 1971
Grand Prix Photo
His spell at Ferrari proved challenging, however, later admitting: “I didn’t feel emotionally attached to Ferrari … it was probably a mistake to go there so soon.”
His tenure was further disrupted when he broke two neck bones in a crash at Brands Hatch in a non-championship race, an injury that curtailed his momentum.
“It could have been very serious, much worse than it was,” de Adamich said. “I just lost the car under braking for Paddock Bend, a result of my inexperience. I hit the wall on the outside, right next to the marshalling post.
“That was lucky because the car caught fire, but they got to me very quickly. I didn’t know at the time, but I had broken two bones in my neck. The doctors said I was OK, but I wasn’t.”
Across the years from 1968 through 1973, de Adamich drove for Ferrari, McLaren (in an Alfa-powered M7D), March, Surtees and finally Brabham.
His final Formula 1 campaign ended abruptly at the 1973 British Grand Prix, when a multi-car pile-up at Woodcote left him with serious leg injuries and effectively ended his single-seater career.
“I came down to Woodcote, slowing from about 170mph — there was no chicane then, remember. When I went into the corner, I saw all these cars crashing in front of me. I couldn’t stop, but then I saw a gap and came off the brakes, thinking I could just about get through.
De Adamich scored his best result with a Surtees-Ford in 1972
Grand Prix Photo
“But Jean-Pierre Beltoise‘s BRM was hit by someone else and came straight across in front of me. I had nowhere to go and hit him, luckily behind the cockpit, and then my car just turned right and went straight into the pitwall. The car stopped and there was just this silence, and a dripping sound from the petrol tank, so I switched off the pump.
“There was no pain, so I undid the belts and put my hands on the sides to lift myself out. But I couldn’t move one centimetre — the chassis was buckled and my legs were trapped. So I sank back down in the cockpit and the pain just exploded. It was terrible, just terrible, until the doctor came with some morphine.
“Marshals had to cut the car horizontally because the fuel tank was full and right next to me, so they couldn’t cut near that. I could see my right leg, going straight as far as the throttle pedal, but my foot was 45 degrees to the leg and my left knee was broken. I was concentrating completely on what it meant, because I had never broken any bones before.
“When I broke my neck at Brands Hatch I just wanted to get back in the car but, after this, I knew my right foot was never going to be perfect again. I thought, ‘I don’t want to do F1 any more’. I didn’t completely trust my foot on the brakes, so began to focus on a new life.”
Rather than fading into retirement, de Adamich reinvented himself.
In the late 1970s, he became the face and voice of the popular television programme Grand Prix on Italia 1, bringing to Italian viewers the combined insight of a former driver and a natural communicator.
At the same time, he turned his attention to business and driver education: he founded the Centro Internazionale Guida Sicura at Varano de’ Melegari in the early 1990s and purchased the former Riccardo Paletti circuit, building a facility that instructed thousands of high-performance drivers each year.
“It was an initiative that came about after Fiat bought Alfa Romeo,” De Adamich said in an interview published by Ferrari. “At the time, there were courses to teach you how to race, not how to drive safely. That’s where the project of promoting ‘safe driving’ began, finding a perfect home in Varano. They were the ideal facilities to make sure that drivers concentrated on guiding the vehicle, in complete safety. The immediate success of the initiative far exceeded our expectations.”
In recognition of his contributions, he was appointed Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2022 – one of Italy’s highest civilian honours.
In Formula 1, de Adamich had 29 grand prix starts, his best result coming in the 1972 Spanish Grand Prix and the 1973 Belgian GP, finishing fourth in both races.
“For me it was always the sport, the competition, not like today when they start as boys in karts with a burning ambition to be world champion,” the Italian said 12 years ago.
“It was never like that for me. I could have gone into politics, or business, but I am only effective if I really believe in what I am doing. And I believed I had the talent to drive racing cars.”
