**DESCRIPTION**
A season already under a pall following the deaths of Gilles Villeneuve and Ricardo Paletti became even grimmer when championship leader Didier Pironi crashed his Ferrari heavily in practice at Hockenheim and broke both his legs. Team-mate Patrick Tambay won the Grand Prix the following day but it was little consolation for the devastated Ferrari team.
Pironi had been on a flying lap in Saturday practice held in heavy rain. The spray hovered between the trees in the forest like a fog and visibility was limited. Pironi came up on Derek Daly's Williams which moved out of his way and Pironi assumed this was to let him by. He accelerated harder to 160mph but in the spray had not seen Alain Prost's Renault. He hit the back of it and that launched him into the air.
"It was 30 meters in the air," Prost recalled. "It landed on its rear and then its front and was cut in two. It was absolutely atrocious." The Ferrari was airborne for many seconds and came crashing down nose first smashing Pironi's legs in the process. He was in agony when medical delegate Sid Watkins arrived. For a time amputation was a real prospect, and while he did recover he never raced again.