The victim of the 1973 British GP crash

The 1973 British Grand Prix is remembered for only one thing - the nine-car pile-up at the exit of Woodcote triggered by Jody Scheckter spinning his McLaren M23.

Astonishingly, the only driver to sustain injuries in the resulting chaos was Italian Andrea de Adamich. It took almost an hour to cut him out of his Brabham BT42, with the resulting injuries ending his single-seater career.

The 31-year-old had not made a dramatic impact on F1 since making his debut in a works Ferrari at Kyalami in 1968, despite a couple of fourth places, one for Surtees in Spain in 1972 and the second with a Brabham in Belgium the following year. But he was a well-respected and capable driver, who had won the 1966 and 1967 1600cc European Touring Car championships for Alfa Romeo.

Having started 20th on the Silverstone grid, de Adamich was in the thick of the drivers who were wiped out trying to avoid Scheckter's stationary car.

"At the old Silverstone, we were flat out in fifth gear in front of the pits at 250-260km/h with full tanks of petrol," he recalls. "In this case, if you see turbulence in front of you, the driver only thinks to find the best way between the other cars to not lose time. I saw a good space in front of me and lifted off the brakes and started to accelerate through.

De Adamich won touring car titles for Alfa Romeo © LAT

"At the same time, the BRM of Jean-Pierre Beltoise was hit from the rear by somebody else [Carlos Pace] and turned 90 degrees to the left, closing my open space.

"I crashed badly with my nose into the engine of the BRM and my Brabham was directed into the guard rail where I crashed again at lower speed, but with the nose already damaged and without the body structure of the front of the car.

"I switched off the fuel pump then opened my six-point belt. I put my hands on the side of the cockpit, trying to push myself out of the car with zero result. I sat back in my seat and only then was I attacked by a terrible pain."

The common estimate for how long it took to free de Adamich from the car is around half-an-hour. But the man himself reveals it took significantly longer.

Trapped in the car, the risk of fire thanks to the full tanks surrounding him meant it was a painstaking process to get him out, involving the unnerving use of cutting equipment around his legs.

"It took 52 minutes," he says. "The main problems were the full tanks of petrol - the tanks around my seat and the cockpit were very damaged.

"The instruments and plastic body were supported by tubular elements that collapsed into my legs. To take me out it was necessary to open up the car in a longitudinal way to avoid cutting the lateral tanks.

"The marshals also utilised hydro-cutting machinery to avoid sparks, which would have been very risky with petrol and the petrol vapour."

The Italian was eventually removed from the car and the race got underway again over an hour after the accident. De Adamich was taken to hospital where it was found that his leg injuries, while not as severe as they might have been, were still career-threatening.

"I am very tall for an F1 driver, 1m89cm, and my BT42 cockpit was at the limit with my pedals as far forward as possible," he says. "My seat had no margin and was very tight.

"With the two impacts with the BRM and the guard rail, the cockpit length of my Brabham was...reduced. My legs were reduced as well. I broke the left knee and, badly, the right ankle.

"The left ankle was the worst. I could not stand for three months and was using a wheelchair. But luckily it was the summer and I spent a lot of time in my house at the Ligurian Sea."

The crash caused widespread damage - this is Roger Williamson's March - but only de Adamich was injured © LAT

It soon became clear that de Adamich was not going to return to racing in single-seaters. But while it is often said the accident ended his motor racing career, that is not strictly accurate.

He did return in 1974 after regaining fitness, although by his own admission the damage to his right leg in particular meant he was no longer the same driver

"With the damage to my right ankle I lost mobility and the sensitivity underneath my foot," he says. "The right foot in my period meant power on the throttle and brake sensibility. I lost a percentage of both.

"It was no longer possible to drive formula cars but I kept on with an Autodelta Alfa Romeo in the world sportscar championship, where the driving limits for long-distance races were less than driving in formula cars.

"I got some good results, which allowed me to become the Italian champion in 1974.

"At the end of the season, I stopped. I had a fantastic business opportunity with Philip Morris and the Marlboro brand because of the good relationship started with them in 1971 when I became the first Italian driver in the Marlboro world championship team.

"At the same time, I was working as a journalist for AutoSprint and for the television coverage of grands prix."

While the accident at Woodcote played a part in the premature conclusion to de Adamich's career, he does not have any hard feelings towards Scheckter for causing the accident.

Scheckter explains in this week's special AUTOSPORT retrospective on the 1973 season that his initial off was caused by running a harder compound tyre on the left-rear of the car. It did not give as much grip as expected when he leaned on it for the first time exiting Woodcote.

De Adamich accepts that it was an honest racing mistake, perhaps caused by the 23-year-old's youthful aggressive approach to racing.

Scheckter (right) ran wide and onto the grass, triggering his spin © LAT

"I do not judge Jody for the accident itself, it was a racing mistake," he says. "But what I criticise and still remember was his impolite position.

"I was the only driver injured in the accident caused by him with my career in question and he never called me or the team to offer his greetings for a quick return."

In fairness to Scheckter, it was a while before he realised de Adamich was injured and he had to dash across the Atlantic to compete in a Can-Am race at Watkins Glen.

But today Scheckter admits that, had he been a little older, his response might have been different.

"First of all, I didn't even know he had got hurt," says Scheckter. "I went to the 60th anniversary of Ferrari and he was there and still seemed upset with me.

"When I was racing for a longer time and was head of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association and somebody got hurt, I did do those things and go to the hospital but in those days I don't think I even thought about it."

But it would be wrong to present de Adamich as bitter about what happened to him. As hit home a few weeks after the accident, he was relatively lucky compared to some.

"I watched in hospital the recording of the accident and saw a March arriving at the accident practically when everything was finished," he says. "It crashed badly, maybe worse than me, but the driver got out with no injuries.

"From my hospital bed, I remember very well thinking 'mamma mia, what an unlucky result for me'. It would be more fair for me to have one broken leg and an arm for him. But later I had reason to be almost happy with my injuries.

"The driver was Roger Williamson, who was burned alive two weeks later in Zandvoort. Had he broken his arm at Silverstone, it would have meant he lived..."

After publishing de Adamich's account of the accident, AUTOSPORT was contacted by his then-head mechanic, Steve Roby.

Roby was involved in the recovery, and offered his recollections of what happened.

"Andrea's Brabham BT42 was brand new for Silverstone. In fact we made some final finishing touches to it in the paddock the day before practice started.

De Adamich had a new BT42 for Silverstone. He raced the BT37 earlier in the year © LAT

"The accident was unfortunate, as Andrea ricocheted off another car, into the sleepers when someone tried to fill the (previously open) gap and he was left with nowhere to go.

"The car was on full tanks and the tub was hydrauliced both out, on the flat outer surfaces and in, on the inside surface of the tub, from the pressure of the fuel coming forward when he hit the sleepers.

"Andrea's feet were trapped between the pedals and the front of the tub, and held there by the steering rack bearing on his shins. On this car the rack was behind the front wheel centre-line about level with the driver's shins.

"If the car had caught fire then he would have been burned in the car. We were all conscious of this so we proceeded with some trepidation and caution. We would not allow the safety guys to use a fibre wheel to cut the rack because of the fire risk.

"Our primary goal was to get him out of the car and to do this we had to free his legs. The marshals had one of those hydraulic pincer things with which they tried to cut off the pedals but could not get enough of them cut away as his lower legs were adjacent to the pedals, and the cutting motion left sharp edges.

"We mechanics then decided to take out the pedal mountings to get some room for his feet to move. This is what took so long.

"I do remember Andrea complaining to me that a minute ago the car was brand new and look at it now, and that we should minimise the damage to the car. Suffice to say he could not see what we were doing.

"I also remember a sensationalist photographer who kept sticking his lens in the middle of what we were doing.

"Bernie came over and asked what he could do to help. I asked him to get rid of this photographer and the photographer was saying that he had a right to his readers. Bernie physically removed him from the vicinity of the car!

"I think we may have also removed the rack, which would not have been simple. To do this the rack would have had to be removed from the casting and then the casting unbolted from the tub.

"The entire episode was unfortunate, but he did survive to drive again."

For more on the Silverstone crash, including the recollections of Scheckter, Emerson Fittipaldi and Jackie Stewart, as well as a series of in-depth features about the 1973 season, see tomorrow's AUTOSPORT magazine, available in print, as a digimag or via iTunes. Also look out for more 1973 content on AUTOSPORT.com from tomorrow.