- 20 Sep 11, 20:38#276161The crash itself wasn't that bad, it's just that he died while trapped. He was not even injured when the tire blew, not when the car flipped, not when it skidded upside down, or even when it lit on fire. He yelled to Purley to get him out. By the time the car was righted and the fire extinquished, he had suffocated. Purley received the George Medal.
But that incident was recorded on film or broadcast. There are so many crashes that are not recorded, and to consider "worst" crashes, we cannot only include the ones we see on TV. I knkow it's impossible to consider things we aren't aware of, but there are very bad crashes in racing history that are way worse than the ones we know of.
Interestingly Purley himself had a more horrific crash than Williamson's in the 1977 Brithish GP. He hit a wall after his gas pedal stuck during prequal, decelerating from 108 mph to zero over 26 inches. He held the record for the most G force survived by a human for many years, at 179.8g. His injuries were extensive. He returned to racing in the Aurora AFX series, but moved on to competitive aerobatics and died in a crash there in 1985. Purley's sequence of events is similar then to Pironi's I would say.
I only know any of this because of WIki.
sent from my supercray using assembler.
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