Echo Sport Replay: Daly – rocketing to Formula One and the journey after

Echo Sport Replay: Daly – rocketing to Formula One and the journey after

By Stephen Leonard

DEREK Daly had never known fear, the like of what he felt as he watched the flames and smoke billow across the track just seconds into the start of the 1978 Italian Formula One Grand Prix at Monza.

One of several drivers who were caught up in a terrible collision approaching the first chicane, he was among those who raced back in a desperate attempt to haul Sweden's Ronnie Peterson from the burning wreckage of his Lotus that had collided with the barrier and bounced back on to the track in flames.

Derek Daly 3 1

Derek Daly from Dundrum recorded the quickest rise to Formula One racing by any driver before him and competed at that level for five years before moving to the United States where he became a major figure in Indy Car and later Sports Car racing

Right at that moment, as he saw Peterson dragged from his car and lying badly injured on the ground, the young man from Dundrum was confronted first-hand with the cold realisation that the sport he loved so much could bring with it the risk of exacting the ultimate price.

Nevertheless, as Peterson lay in hospital fighting for his life, one he sadly lost the following day, Daly and his fellow drivers were sent back out to race less than three hours after the accident, the Dubliner recording his first top-ten finish in Formula One that evening.

Those conflicting emotions of joy and sadness that Daly experienced that day in 1978 would prove a recurring theme throughout his career and life outside of motor racing.

But this was the path he chose as a 12-year-old boy, who, one day, caught sight of a racing car owned by Sidney Taylor and, soon after, vowed to become a professional racing driver himself.

Daly’s rise to the heights of Formula One would be the quickest of any competitor before him, and life behind the wheel would take him around the world, but also to the very brink of death during his days of Indy Car racing that followed his move to the US.

“I was walking home from school one day and there was a truck from England parked in Wyckham Park with ‘Sidney Taylor Racing’ written on the side of it” recalled Daly.

“Sidney Taylor was from Dublin, lived in England, had a racing car, and in 1965 brought it back to race in Dunboyne.

Derek McMahon right with Derek Daly 1

Derek Daly with his sponsor Derek McMahon after winning a round of the Formula Three Championship in 1977

“As it happened, he was staying with his sister and his sister bought her groceries from my dad. My dad had the local grocery shop.

“So they were talking while I was in school and my dad said that at 7 o’clock that night I could go back and I could see the racing car. That was the first actual racing car I’d ever laid eyes on.

“The village of Dunboyne had a road race every year at that time and my dad said ‘I’ll take you out to Dunboyne to see this race’ which he did, and that’s the day that changed my life.

“From that moment on I decided that I was going to become a professional racing driver.

“Coming from Ireland, that was a bit of an audacious goal because, at that stage, we didn’t even have a race track. Mondello wasn’t built until 1968.

Derek Daly making his Formula One Grand Prix debut in Brands Hatch in 1978 when he drove for Team Ensign 1

Derek Daly from Dundrum making his Formula One Grand Prix debut at Brands Hatch in 1978 when he drove for Team Ensign

“I didn’t have enough money to go karting, I knew nothing about it nor did I know anybody in it, so when I was 16, the only thing I could do was race stock cars out in Santry.

“But to become a professional I obviously had to get into a proper racing car and it had to be a Formula Ford.

“The only way to get enough money to buy a car and make the money fast was to become a labourer in the iron ore mines of Australia.

“That was the winter of ’74 and early ’75. Myself and David Kennedy, a friend of mine also from Dundrum who also wanted to race, we both decided the only way we could make the money fast was to go to Australia and be labourers, so we did just that.

“I came back with £5000 which was $10,000 in those days and I’d never seen that amount of money.

Derek Daly with his sons Colin Conor and Christian 1

Derek Daly with his sons Colin, Conor and Christian

“That allowed me to buy a Formula Ford in 1975 and I won the Irish Formula Ford Championship at my second attempt, but my first serious attempt at it in a good car.

“Having won the Irish Championship, I knew then that I had to move to England, because that was the home of professional racing at the time.

“So I bought an old bus, took all the seats out of it, my mother made curtains, my dad made a mattress and gave me one of those little gas camper stoves and I left home in 1976 to race in England, driving this bus from race track to race track, trying to earn enough money to get to the next race.

“That was the great summer of ’76 in England and I won 23 races in England that year.

“At the end of the year they had the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch and in ’76 it was called ‘The tribute to James’ because James Hunt had just won the Formula One World Championship.

Derek Daly driving for Guinness March in Silverstone in 1981 1

Derek Daly driving for Guinness March in Silverstone in 1981

“About 150 competitors from all over the world turned up and I won everything. I won my heat, quarter final, semi final, I won the final and received the trophy from James Hunt himself.

“That was when I got my first big sponsor which was a fella from Donegal called Derek McMahon, known as ‘Big D’.

“I was going to do the British Formula Three Championship and then do select European events.

“I was still based in England and, lo and behold, I won the British Formula Three Championship too. That was big. But the really interesting part about this was that at the Austrian Grand Prix, the Formula One race was supported by the Formula Three race and I decided to go there.

“I qualified on pole beside Nelson Piquet who went on to become three-time World champion, and as I’m sitting in the car, strapped in on the pre-grid ready to go out for the race, a fella shuffled up to my sponsor and my mentor Derek and leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

Derek Daly racing at the 1982 Monaco Grand Prix which he very nearly won 1

Derek Daly racing at the 1982 Monaco Grand Prix which he very nearly won

“’Big D’ came over to me and he said ‘that fella there said if you win this race he’ll put you in a Formula One car before the end of the year.’

“I asked Derek ‘who was it?’ He said ‘It was a fella called Sidney Taylor’ – Sidney Taylor, the fella who had brought the racing car to my neighbourhood when I was 12 years old. It was amazing.

“I went out and had a barnstormer of a race with Piquet, won the race and when I got back to England, the ICI Formula Two team was looking for a driver to do the last race of the Formula Two Championship, the European Championship in Estoril.

“They offered me the drive, I went to Estoril, qualified fifth, finished fifth, set a new lap record and then four weeks later I was in a Formula One car. It happened so unbelievably fast.

“I went from winning the Formula Ford Festival to Formula One in 13 months. No one had ever risen to Formula One that fast before. It was just unbelievable.

“I was in a Formula One car testing in November 1977 and my first Formula One race was in March of ’78 in Silverstone. I was in the Hesketh, the team that James Hunt had driven for in his Formula One debut.

“It was pissing rain on race day and halfway around the first lap I out-breaked James Hunt who was leading, drove around the outside and took the lead in my very first Formula One race. It was amazing.

“My visor broke and fell down, so the rain at 150mph was just pelting my eyes, and I couldn’t see so I went off the road.

“You had to be fearless in those days. If you were afraid for whatever reason, I don’t believe you could make the step up.

“I was in Formula One five years and in the five years I was there, five of my friends who I raced against were killed. It was rough.

“In 1978 I was going to do Formula One and the European Formula Two Championship at the same time, because I didn’t have a guaranteed Formula One contract. I was still waiting for that to develop.

“My first Formula One Grand Prix was Brands Hatch in 1978 and I was driving for Team Ensign. I qualified 15th right beside James Hunt in the McLaren only two years after he had presented me with the trophy at the Formula Ford Festival at the same venue.

“My second race was at Monza and it was there that I was involved in the accident that killed Ronnie Peterson.

“Ronnie Peterson got hit on the run to the first chicane, there was a huge crash, explosion and ball of fire.

“As I went by, I got hit by one of the Ferraris, I spun and when I got out, it looked like the whole race track was on fire. It was like an airline accident.

“I was one of five drivers who ran back to try and pull Ronnie Peterson out of his car. It was by far the most scared I have ever been in my life.

“You see him badly injured lying on the ground and he died later as a result of his injuries.

“I walked back to the pits and when I got back there a journalist was asking me to describe what happened and halfway through the description I started crying, because I’d never seen anything like that.

“So I’m back in the pits. I’m with my family, thinking about what just happened when my team manager taps me on the shoulder and says ‘the race is going to restart in 20 minutes and the spare car is ready, so pull yourself together.’

“That was how you had to operate. Although one of our own got killed, you were still expected to put the helmet back on because you were a racing driver. You had to coldly put it out of your mind and go on.

“I went out and scored my first top ten in Formula One two and a half hours later.

“The last Grand Prix of the year was in Montreal and that was where I scored my first World Championship point. I finished sixth and back in those days only the top six got points, so that was a big day

“In 1979, again it was a mix of Formula One and Formula Two. I was still winning Formula Two races and at the end of ’79 I met Ken Tyrrell of the Tyrrell team. That was the team that Jackie Stewart won his three championships for.

“I met him at Donnington Park in England. The last round of the European Formula Two Championship was held there and I was on pole and won it and Tyrrell offered me a contract for the following year which was 1980. That allowed me to concentrate on Formula One.

“That year I moved to Monaco and then I had a succession of crashes, one being a big one in Monaco. I didn’t get hurt, but it was a high-profile event to crash and take your team mate out at the same time.

“But 1980 was good. I finished fourth in Argentina, fourth at the British Grand Prix, but I had too many accidents. Many of them were not my fault.

“I had a brake failure in Zandvoort at the Dutch Grand Prix and crashed at a 185mph. That was the first time in my career that I actually thought that I could die because the car hit so hard. When they lifted me out of the car I collapsed, I was so afraid.

“At the end of the year I had a succession of crashes, none of which were my fault.

“You were beginning to question what was going on here, but you always thought that it would end, you always pushed forward and I finished tenth in the Drivers’ Championship.

“The following year in ’81 I drove for the March team, sponsored by Guinness, but the car was not good and I didn’t qualify for the first six races I think, so that was a bit of a struggle.

“Nothing really good happened that year and the following year I got signed by Williams. That was my big chance to race for them in 1982, but it just didn’t work out.

“When I look back on it, I believe I didn’t understand the cars technically well enough and I think that happened because I got to Formula One too fast.

“I got there so fast I didn’t learn my trade along the way- how to set it up, how to engineer the car, how to make the car go faster. I just wasn’t in sync in 1982.

“That year in Monaco I did almost win. There were five different leaders in the last five laps I think, some crashes and a lot of drivers ran out of fuel.

“I took the lead, but my gearbox broke as I was about to start the last lap. I just stepped out of the car and walked away.

“At the end of the year I got divorced and that was when I decided I wanted to move to America.

“Our last Formula One Grand Prix was in Las Vegas in ’82 and two weeks after that, the last Indy Car race of the season was held in Phoenix, on the Phoenix One Mile Oval.

“I had never seen an Indy Car before and I got a chance to go and race in one. A Formula One car, from 0-100mph, was faster than an Indy Car, but an Indy Car, from 100-200mph, was faster than a Formula One car. I was fascinated by that and I wanted to race at the Indy 500.

“High-speed, oval track racing, particularly the Indy 500, just became intriguing to me, so I went to America in 1983, really just for curiosity, and I never left. I always liked America. I liked the country, I liked the people and I stayed forever.

“There was a guy there called Tony Bettenhausen and I joined his team. That’s how my Indy career started.

“I was just taken aback by just how big it [the Indy 500] was. I mean there were 350,000 people there. I had never seen that amount of people before.

“But the worst moment of my career there was my crash at the end of 1984 at the high-speed oval in Michigan [International Speedway]. I was all but killed. It was the hardest crash impact that a driver had ever managed to survive.

“I’ve no memory of the actual impact. I just remember the aftermath. I remember being taken out of the car, I remember the helicopter to take me to the hospital, but I was so badly injured and so heavily sedated, I don’t remember much of the next couple of months.

“The crash impact was 212mph against a concrete wall and I was in intensive care for two weeks, I was in hospital for two months and in a wheelchair for two more months and crutches for two more months and I was in therapy for years.

“But the reason I wanted to go back racing was that I never wanted an accident to be what ended my career. I wanted to be able to leave on my own terms.

“While I was in recovery I did some television interviews and that started my television career so I actually had two careers going at the same time from 1985 until 1991 where I was racing and doing television.

“I raced Indy cars until 1989 and then I moved over to sports cars with Jaguar and Nissan who are two of the biggest sports car teams, so I was lucky that I ended my career on a high, winning international races with good sports car teams.

“After being hurt that badly, it’s hard to drive at that ragged-edge level again and I knew that. I knew the sharp end of my single-seater racing was coming to an end.

“But that helped me when I moved into sports cars because I had the experience and yet I was able to run close to the edge, but not over the edge, because in sports car racing, long-distance racing, the important thing is that you don’t have accidents.

“Sebring 12-hours is probably the biggest endurance race here in America and I won it in 1990 and I won it again in ’91.

“But in 1990 when I won it, I was on the podium, celebrating, but I realised that the podium celebration wasn’t really the buzz or the satisfaction that I thought it might be.

“That was my first really big international win since my accident and I realised it wasn’t the buzz of excitement I thought it would be. I knew then that was the beginning of the end of my career.

“I knew I wouldn’t race much longer, so I decided that I would race one more year in ’91, won it again and told my team manager ‘I’m done, I’m going to retire at the end of the year.’

“He told me that no one had ever won Sebring three times in their only three starts and he said ‘Why don’t you come back next year and just do Daytona and Sebring and then call it a day?

“So I decided to do that. I qualified on the pole at Daytona and I was leading at Sebring when the rear wheel came off.

“That was it. I was done and I was happy to walk away. I was well entrenched in television at the time and my television career went on for 20 years almost.

“I loved television broadcasting and I got on well with it. I almost had the same buzz with it as I had racing, I was that into it.

“Being able to paint the picture of what’s actually going on, trying to emotionally involve people in the sport, it was great.

“After 2005 I started doing key-note speeches for companies and that went on for another 15 years.

“Suddenly I had a story to tell and I was doing about 25 events a year, I was represented by some of the biggest speaking bureaus in America and I would go to Europe and South America and all over to speak.

“I actually still do a bit. I’m going to Cancún in Mexico to do two down there, so I suppose I’m semi retired.

“It’s amazing to look back on my career, because when all this was happening, you’re not really conscious about it, you’re just reacting.

“You don’t get to absorb the reality of what’s actually happening. It’s only years after when you can look back and you’re gobsmacked by some of the things that happened and how they happened.

“So I look back on my careers with a sense of satisfaction. From being a shy boy in Dundrum, I got to live a life that most people can only dream about.

“To be involved in a sport your whole life, not shackled to a career that you’re forced into. I basically did something I loved every day and I was so fortunate.

“But I think what’s important about this is that a lifestyle like mine is highly unstable.

“High-speed racing, death and divorce dominates your career and your personal life suffers as a result of that.

“There were a lot of casualties in my personal life largely because of the unpredictable and unstable lifestyle that I chose, so it’s not all rosy.

“You go through difficulties and have issues more than, what I call, the mainstream lifestyle, but that’s the price that you have to accept for going down that road.

“No part of my career was ever really planned out. You were just taking the next step and seeing how far you could go.”

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