From Williams to Shadow

Renzo Zorzi (1946-2015) was a racing driver from Italy who participated in seven Formula One Grand Prix between 1975 and 1977, for the Williams, Wolf and Shadow teams. He scored one championship point, in Brazil in 1977, at the wheel of a Shadow.

Picture above: Renzo Zorzi, pushing his Shadow DN8-Cosworth  hard during qualifying for the 1977 US Grand Prix West at Long Beach. He qualified in 20th position while his team mate Alan Jones was 14th, but both cars suffered gearbox failures in the race.

After surprising everyone by winning the 1975 Monaco Formula 3 Grand Prix, Zorzi arranged a deal with Frank Williams to drive one of his cars at the Italian Grand Prix, where he did well to qualify just 0.7s slower than his team-mate Laffite. The arrangement continued at the first race of 1976 in Brazil, where he out-qualified his experienced team mate, Ickx. However, his sponsorship money had run out, and his time with Williams came to an end.

Zorzi returned to Formula One in 1977 with the Shadow team, as team-mate to the highly-rated Welsh driver Tom Pryce, backed by their Italian sponsor Franco Ambrosio, who had demanded an Italian driver as part of the agreement for his financial support. At the second race of the season in Brazil, in a race of attrition, the Italian finished sixth of seven finishers, gaining his only F1 point in only his fourth Grand Prix.

However, tragedy struck in the following race in South Africa. Driving the new DN8, Zorzi was running near the back of the field when he was stopped by a fuel leak. A fire erupted at the rear and Zorzi quickly got out of the car. Two marshal ran across the track with hand-held fire extinguishers. Crossing the track just behind a blind brow, one of the marshals, Frederick Jansen Van Vuuren, was struck and killed by the car of Zorzi’s team-mate Tom Pryce. Van Vuuren’s fire extinguisher struck Pryce on his helmet, causing fatal head injuries…

Renzo Zorzi then drove two more anonymous races at Long Beach and in Spain, but when he arrived in Monaco for the 1977 Monaco Grand Prix, he found that his car had Riccardo Patrese’s name on it, and that he had been replaced by Patrese, another Ambrosio protege, without being informed. Zorzi then occasionally raced in sports cars, before re-joining Pirelli, running a driving school for the company, in southern Italy.