The Grand Prix Drivers Club lost one of its most loyal members with the passing of Andrea de Adamich on November 5.
Andrea was a true gentleman whose ancestors moved from Croatia to Trieste. His original family were prominent merchants in Rijeka but we in motor racing knew him as one of Italy’s finest racing drivers to come to the fore in the early 1970’s.
Like many Italians he started out in Formula Junior then transferred to Formula 3 and won the 1965 Italian Formula 3 Championship racing a Jolly Club Lola Mark 5A and a Brabham BT15.
The following season, 1956, he was brought into the Alfa Romeo Touring Car team contesting the European Touring Car Championship and won the series outright With an Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti.
Logically he moved into Formula 2 in 1967 when signed up by Lola alongside Jo Siffert in Lola 100’s for the VI Gran Premio del Mediterraneo at Pergusa in Sicily.
Andrea was now competing against the Formula 1 greats including Graham Hill and Jim Clark in Lotus 48’s and Jackie Stewart and Jacky Ickx in Tyrrell Matra’s. Pergusa was a high speed circuit at that time with the Formula 2 cars lapping at nearly 150 mph! He retired in the first heat and finished 9th in the second
Despite this, at the end of the 1967 season he was brought into Scuderia Ferrari by Enzo Ferrari to race in a hurriedly organised non-championship Spanish Grand Prix to launch the new Kyalami circuit. He was entered as a third car with the 312 grand prix car alongside regular team drivers Jacky Ickx and Chris Amon.
His performance in practice saw him line up 7th on the grid, ahead of his two more illustrious team members, and a mere 10th of a second behind former Ferrari world champion John Surtees: he punctured a tyre and crashed in the race.
When he then crashed in the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch the accident that kept him out of racing for the rest of the season.
By October, he was fit enough to run in the Ferrari  Formula 2 team with the 166 Dino, alongside Ernesto Brambilla and Derek Bell and once again demonstrated his ability by equalling the fastest lap in practice and lining up alongside Brambilla on the front row of the grid in the first heat. They were to finish first and second in that order. In the second heat de Adamich had a tougher race to try and keep Peter Gethin’s Brabham at bay which he did giving Ferrari another 1-2 in the aggregate results.
Andrea was then chosen to do the Temporada series in Argentina with the Dino alongside Brambilla. In the first round in Buenos Aires, he finished second to Brambilla and in the second round was on pole position at Cordoba to Clay Regazzoni in a Tecno and recorded his first outright win for Ferrari. He won again at San Juan and again in the third round and ended up the Temporada Champion by an impressive 14 points ahead of Jochen Rindt.
His return to grand prix racing in 1970 with McLaren came about due to Alfa Romeo providing their new grand prix engine to McLaren but the season started off badly when he failed to qualify for the first three races.
A year with STP-March in 1971 was not much better.
It was only in 1972, when he was signed by John Surtees for the Ceramica Pagnossin sponsored Surtees  TS9B Cosworth, that he had similar mechanical problems but took 4th place in the Spanish grand prix. He signed again with Surtees for 1973  but after the South African grand prix, his Italian sponsors switched their sponsorship to Brabham. His best result was 4th place in the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder but in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, he was involved in the multi-car accident on the opening lap which saw him hospitalised with a broken leg, and he retired from grand prix racing
His contract with Alfa Romeo saw him run in the Alfa team with the legendary T33 variants and it was with Alfa Romeo he ran for the first time at le Mans in 1970 but retired. He returned in 1972 and finished 4th overall with co-driver Nino Vacarella driving the Autodelta 33/TT3 . De Adamich also raced in Formula 3000.
Andrea de Adamich retired from racing in 1972 but was to become Italy’s most important TV journalists on Italia 1.
Speaking personally, Andrea was one of the nicest people in motor racing and in later years he ran the programme run by Enzo Ferrari whereby key dealerships around the world were invited to send a group of customers to the Mugello circuit. Andrea ran a three-day training session to help new Ferrari owners improve their driving skills and I was invited to take part in one of those sessions along with customers from Ferrari’s Hong Kong importers.
Andrea’s team including a group of up and coming young Italian drivers who drove competition tuned Alfa Romeo saloons with radio connections between the instructors and the participants. At that time guests with no track experience were using Ferrari 355’s but there were also two 512M’s that anyone with track experience could drive. It was a well run programme.
Meanwhile, in 1991 de Adamich established his similar International Safe Driving Centre at the Varano circuit near Parma to which his Alfa Romeo and Maserati driving programmes moved. As it was situated beside the Dallara factory it was also used as a testing circuit.
In the year 2000, when I was organising the Ecurie Ecosse Tour based on an hotel near Imola I was surprised when Andrea turned up to stay overnight as he had to be in Milan for a TV programme the next day. As it happened one of the competitors on our Tour was former 2 litre Sports Car driver Andrew Fletcher who, at that time, did some historic racing and owned one of the Tipo 33 models Andrea had raced. Andrea joined us for dinner and enthralled Fletcher with his stories on racing Alfa sports cars.
He was also a regular visitor at Grand Prix Drivers Club meetings and the President, Emanuele Pirro, and all the members send their condolences to Sophia and Andrea’s three children on the passing of Andrea de Adamich .