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The Welsh Formula One driver Tom Pryce never achieved the top position on the podium in a championship F1 race. He only mounted the podium twice, with third places at the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975 and the Brazilian Grand Prix in 1976. That is not to say he never won a Formula 1 race, he did achieve victory in the non-championship Race of Champions, at Brands Hatch in 1975, becoming the first Welshman to win a Formula 1 race.

Tom Maldwyn Pryce was born in Ruthin, Wales on 11 June 1949. He started racing at the age of twenty in 1969. His early racing career covered Formula 5000 and Lotus Esprit Formula Ford. In 1970, he won the Lotus Esprit Formula Ford Championship the prize being a Formula Ford Lola T200 car.

He moved to near the Brands Hatch circuit to continue his racing career. Tom won in the Sportscar Formula 100 category before moving onto Formula Super Vee winning this championship in 1972. He also drove in Formula 3 and Formula Atlantic before moving up to Formula 1 in 1974.

Tom Pryce drove one race in Belgium for the Token Formula One team before moving to the Shadow Racing team. His first year in Formula 1 earned him only one championship point when he came sixth at the German Grand Prix and he finished eighteenth in the championship. Over the next two years, Pryce was often rumored to be leaving Shadow but he remained with the team. In 1975, he finished tenth in the championship with eight points and the following year he managed to gain ten points but finished twelfth in the World Drivers Championship.

By the third race of the 1977 season Pryce had failed to gain a single championship point. He qualified eighteenth on the grid for the South African Grand Prix held at the Kyalami circuit. A poor start put him in last position by the end of the first lap. He then started to move through the ranks to reach thirteenth place by lap eighteen.

On lap twenty-one Pryce's teammate, Renzo Zorzi, was having problems with his fuel pump and, as he pulled over to the left of the main straight, his car caught fire. Zorzi had problems disconnecting his oxygen tube from his helmet to exit the burning vehicle and two fire marshals crossed the main straight from the pit wall to aid the driver. As they crossed the straight, four drivers including Pryce entered the straight at approximately 170 mph. Hans-Joachim Stuck saw the two marshals and managed to pull over to miss both of them. Pryce immediately behind Stuck had no chance to avoid a collision with nineteen-year-old Frederik Jansen Van Vuuren. The high-speed collision killed the young fire marshal and sent the forty-pound fire extinguisher the young man had been carrying into Pryce's vehicle. The extinguisher hit his helmet forcing it upwards. The chinstrap of his helmet caused fatal neck injuries to the Welsh driver. The extinguisher then hit the vehicle's roll hoop, before catapulting over the grandstand to land on a car in the car park. Pryce's car with the driver dead at the wheel continued down the straight eventually hitting Jaques Lafitte's Lieger car putting it out of the race but fortunately causing no further injuries.

In a sport that has seen so many tragic deaths that of Tom Pryce was particularly poignant. No one expects a driver to die because of a fire extinguisher, something normally used to save the lives of drivers trapped in burning vehicles.

Annually a Welshman making an outstanding contribution to either motor racing or transport receives the Tom Pryce trophy (also known as the Tom Pryce Award). On 11 June 2009, his home town of Ruthin unveiled a memorial plaque, erected in his memory.

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