Former Scuderia Ferrari pilota Gianclaudio ‘Clay’ Regazzoni was killed in a car crash in Italy on Friday. He is reported to have collided head on with a truck on the A1 Motorway near Parma.

He will be known to many as the F1 driver who in 1980 crashed at Long Beach, suffering irreparable damage to his spine which caused him to be confined to a wheelchair. This did not stop him driving and, even at times racing, cars fitted with hand controls and teaching others to do the same, but of course there was much more to him than this.

Clay was born in 1939 close to Lugano in Switzerland, almost on the Italian border. This geographical proximity was to lead him later to become almost adopted by the Italians as one of their heroes and mistaken by many to have come from that country.

He started his life in motor sport with an Austin Healey Sprite before running Brabhams in Formula Three. He moved on to Tecnos in 1967 and scored many good results with the responsive but demanding little cars. This led to Enzo Ferrari offering him a seat in one of the Formula 2 1.6 Dinos for 1969, but the cars were unreliable and undeveloped and sensibly he left at the end of the season.

Clay was a very hard driver and can probably be said to be one of the last of the old-school before top level racing started to become somewhat anodyne. The Pederzani brothers (who owned Tecno) saw talent mixed up in his slightly hooligan style of driving and took him on for the 1970 season as one of their works Formula Two pilots; he proved them right by winning the championship.

Meanwhile Enzo had not forgotten him and invited him to drive a second Ferrari 312B in Formula 1 alongside Jackie Ickx. His first appearance was at Brands Hatch where he brought his car home an impressive fourth - the only Ferrari finisher. In those days Ferrari’s Grand Prix results usually improved in the latter part of the season, after sports car racing had finished for the year. It's hard to believe it today but in those days sports car racing was as important to Ferrari as F1! 1970 was no exception and the 312Bs went from strength-to-strength and Clay capitalised on it. The Austrian GP at Zeltweg saw the three 312s running 1-2-3 and he finished second, following this up with a momentous win at Monza in the Italian GP.

1971 started with the 312B2 and a win at Brands Hatch in the Race of Champions but the new car proved not quite quick enough and results slipped. Sports car racing was one of the culprits again, taking time and effort out of the Grand Prix team, but at least we tifosi could enjoy the spectacle of GP drivers racing proper sports cars. There was great enjoyment in watching drivers of the calibre of Clay and Ickx, especially when they were having to make up time in the fabulous 312PB as they had frequently to do that year following some or other incident or problem.

Once such incident was at Brands Hatch where Regga, as he was now known to enthusiasts, said after tripping over a spinning Dulon in the early stages, "We had to drive the rest of the race like a five-hour Grand Prix". It wouldn’t be the last time the Dulon got in the Ferrari’s way and it is a mark of the man that he was always happy to laugh and joke about the incidents later with Ed McDonough and the rest of the tardy English car’s drivers.

Ferrari released him at the end of a full ’72 season of F1 and sports cars in the 312PBs and he went to BRM, but the best was yet to come.

Maranello asked him back for 1974 to join Niki Lauda and although Lauda was supposed to be no.1, it was Clay who came within a few points of taking the World Championship. 1975 and 1976 were two of those comeback glory years for the Prancing Horse and Clay took the Italian GP again at Monza in ’75, following up with the Long Beach GP in ’76.

He went from Maranello to Walsall in 1977, where the little Ensign team of Mo Nunn was his home. This was followed by a lack-lustre season with Shadow before another phoenix year in ’79, this time with Frank Williams’ born again Formula One team for whom he had the great pleasure of providing their first ever Grand Prix win, in front of their home crowd at Silverstone. This was Clay's fifth and last GP win and when Williams replaced him at the end of the year he went back to Ensign. It all finished when his brake-pedal snapped off at Long Beach in ’80.

In true old school fashion I have no hesitation in saying that he was the proverbial great bloke. True, he had flaws but they served to show a human side that is so lacking today. Typically I remember a riotous evening in Sicily on the Giro Di Sicilia. The aforementioned former Dulon pilot Ed McDonough, myself and the Event Organiser exited the dining room one evening to find Clay reclining on a sofa in the hotel lobby. Very quickly and politically incorrectly, the organiser relieved Clay of his wheelchair, and in it we started time trials round the spacious lobby egged on by a delighted Regga.

Rest easy Clay, it was great while it lasted.