Dubliner Derek Daly insists he still remembers remembers “every millisecond” of his infamous crash at the 1980 Monaco Grand Prix “in HD quality, as if it happened yesterday”.
The former Formula 1 driver joined Off The Ball tonight to discuss his extraordinary rise from knocking around with David Kennedy and Eddie Jordan in suburban Dublin in the 1960s to almost winning F1’s most famous race in 1982.
“My dad sold vegetables in a corner grocer store in Dundrum,” Daly - on the line from snowy Indiniapolis, where he now lives - told Joe. “For some strange reason, the Dundrum area became rich in motorsport personalities around the time we were teenagers and in our early 20s.
“David Kennedy, myself, Eddie Jordan, Bernard Devanney all sort of hung around together and for some reason we all decided to make an attempt at becoming professionals.
“I was one of the lucky ones along with Eddie and David.”
Daly’s unique journey took him to digging iron ore in Australia with Kennedy – an endeavour which earned him the money allowed him to buy a Formula Ford "and the rocket ship took off from there", as he puts it himself.
Reaching Formula 1 status in 1978 was an "unbelievable time in my life ... when everything had to become and focused and selfish,” recalled Daly.
“You sacrificed family and friendships and relationships all to try and make it into F1. You sacrifice ... and then when you get there it's such a savage sport.
"There are people getting killed left, right and centre. The reality of what you’re in - you don't actually realise where you've landed."
While he almost won at Monaco in 1982 with Williams, the 61-year-old is better known for a crash at the same venue two years earlier.
"It's arguably the most-used piece of Formula 1 footage ever,” said Daly. "I remember every millisecond of that in HD quality in my brain as if it happened yesterday.
“Your life slows down. Everything begins to go in slow-motion. I can even remember focusing on the pebbles on the ground when I thought I was going to land upside down."
Racing through what he described as the the "James Hunt era", Daly continued: "It's only years later when you look back that you realise where you've been. I don't know if I was ever was in a position to truly absorb, enjoy, and understand what was going on."
Daly’s description of F1’s “savage” nature was most apparent in his recollection of Ronnie Peterson's fatal accident at the start of the 1978 Italian GP at Monza – and he admits he wept before being ordered to compete in the race editorially after the Swede’s crash.
Daly himself was of course prone to an accident on track and one such incident – at the Michigan 200 in September 1984 – nearly cost him his life. It was the worst crash of his racing career, and hitting a wall at 206 mph left the Dubliner critically injured and spawned 14 operations, not to mention three years of therapy.
It "changed the direction of my life" said Daly, who revealed it took six months before he could stand on his own legs again.
Interviewing Indy 500 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay at Trophy presentation Indianapolis today pic.twitter.com/yNOCmV6XsY
— Derek Daly (@DerekDaly500) December 4, 2014
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