On this day in 1986, Formula One lost Elio de Angelis after an accident at the Circuit Paul Ricard.
Elio de Angelis wasn’t just any driver. He took two Grand Prix victories in the 1980s and was seen as a future word championship contender by many.
He led Lotus into the 1980s, beating World Champion teammates in the same car such as Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell.
In 1982, he famously played the piano to entertain drivers during the FISA-FOCA war at the South African Grand Prix.
His 1984 season remains a notable season due to the Roman’s consistency, scoring points in 11 of the 16 races that season to finish third in the driver’s standings behind dominant McLaren duo Niki Lauda and Alain Prost.
His victory at the modern-day Red Bull Ring (then the Österreichring) was a breakthrough moment for him - it was his second podium in F1 and showed what he could do with a quick car underneath him.
The win itself was memorable due to the close finish with Keke Rosberg, who won the World Championship that year. It was also the final victory that Colin Chapman saw for the team he had built from the ground up before his death in December that year.
His second win came in 1985, benefiting from disqualification to Alain Prost for a weight infringement at the San Marino Grand Prix.
However, the arrival of future world champion Ayrton Senna at Lotus in 1985 spelled the end of de Angelis’ time with the team. Senna’s talent was focused on, and de Angelis wanted to be a number one driver.
As well as this, Senna had convincingly beat de Angelis in qualifying head-to-heads and was five points ahead at the end of the season, the second time de Angelis was beaten by a teammate over a season in his Grand Prix career after Mansell beat de Angelis in 1983. De Angelis had beaten Mansell in 1981, 1982 and 1984 convincingly though.
De Angelis moved to the by-now struggling Brabham team to replace Nelson Piquet, who had gone to Williams after Keke Rosberg took the retiring Niki Lauda’s seat at McLaren.
Elio de Angelis passed away on this day in 1986 following a testing accident at the Paul Ricard circuit the day before. His season at Brabham hadn’t began well, scoring no points in the opening four rounds.
De Angelis was testing at the Paul Ricard circuit near Marseille a few days after the Monaco Grand Prix. He suffered a high speed crash due to a rear wing failure. Whilst the impact didn’t kill him - he had a broken collar bone - he became poisoned by smoke due to the car being on fire, as he couldn’t get out of the car.
Due to a lack of safety, marshals were not on hand to help until far too late, by which point Alan Jones and Prost were there to try and free de Angelis. His condition got worse the longer he was stuck. He died of smoke inhalation 29 hours later in a hospital in Marseille aged just 28.
His death prompted safety changes in
F1 around testing which made it mandatory to have a helicopter on the scene of any official test.
The death of de Angelis was also a factor in Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blash’s drive for F1 safety, as Whiting and Blash had worked with de Angelis at Brabham.
Image credit goes to LAT Images and Getty Images.