Death-dodger Derek Daly recalls a racing career of aspiration and determination.
Irish-American racer Derek Daly quickly ascended to the
heights of automotive road racing, but not without his fair share of hardship.
Sustaining a 17-year professional career in racing is a feat unto itself, but bouncing
back from numerous life-threatening crashes required an inner commitment and
strength of vision that forges champions.
For Daly, it all started at the age of 12 when he spied a
racecar hauler marked “Sydney Taylor Racing” around the corner from his
father’s vegetable stand in suburban Dublin. The elder Daly noted his son’s
interest, and arranged with the lorry driver to give him a look at the Brabham
BT-8 inside. It’s likely this car was chassis #SC-6-64, which had been successfully
driven by Denny Hulme throughout 1964 before heading to Ireland for the
Leinster Trophy and Phoenix Park races in July of 1965. Young Derek was
completely gobsmacked by the sight of the Brabham, and his father followed up
by taking him to the races that weekend, cementing in him a love of racecars.
The vision which set 12-year-old Derek Daly on the path to becoming a Formula 1 driver: the 1964 Brabham BT-8 chassis #SC-6-64 in Sydney Taylor livery as seen here in 2009 at Infineon Raceway.
“I remember the sights, the smells, everything about that
day,” recounted Daly to the Ferrari Club of America Desert Region during a
recent event at the Penske Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona
Following a stint working in an iron ore mine in Australia,
Derek scrounged up enough money to buy his own race car, a Formula Ford. He
started racing and quickly moved up the ranks, finding himself in contention
for the Formula 3 Championship in 1977. “My car owner/mentor Derek McMahon came
over to me on the grid, and said ‘That man over there said if you win this
race, he’ll put you in a Formula 1 car before the end of the year.’ I asked who
he was, and he said ‘His name is Sydney Taylor.’” Daly won, and true to his
word Taylor offered him a seat with a new F1 team called Theodore Racing. In
the span of 13 months, Daly had made the jump from racing entry-level Formula
Fords to the pinnacle of motorsports, Formula 1.
But this rapid upward trajectory met headfirst with the realities
of professional racing at the Grand Prix of Monaco in 1980. “I had just flown
my parents in to see the race. They had never even been on an airplane before! They
were watching the start of the race from my apartment above the first turn at
Sainte Dévote,”
said Daly. What unfolded directly beneath them was perhaps the most dramatic
crash in the history of the famed circuit, sending Daly in a careening spin
that would take out his car and three others from the race. “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.”
A view similar to what Derek Daly’s parents had of their son’s #4 car crashing at the 1980 GP of Monaco.
Relatively unscathed from the Monaco crash, Daly would continue to race at the sport’s highest level for the next two years, logging a total of 64 races in an era which he calls “The Wild West of Formula 1” for its excessive speed and tragic fatalities. He later recalled this period as an "unbelievable time in my life... when everything had to become focused and selfish. 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 center. The reality of what you’re in – you don't actually realize where you've landed."
Two years after leaving Formula 1, Daly would face his
biggest scare at the Michigan International Speedway during the 1984 CART Michigan
200 when he hit the wall at over 200 mph, shearing the nose off the car and leaving
his dangling legs exposed.
The accident left Daly with a crushed left ankle, broken
ribs, a broken left hand, fractures to his leg, hip and pelvis, and
third-degree burns and internal bleeding. He required 14 surgeries and three
years of physical therapy before returning to full-time racing in 1987.
The will to recover traced back to his earliest memory of
racecars, as he relayed to The Irish Sun newspaper in 2019. “When I was 12 and
told my dad I wanted to be a racing driver, he said, 'Remember you'll be
completely responsible for the legacy you leave in the sport.’ That made no
sense to me until my accident. Then I realized I would hate my accident to be
the legacy I would leave. Once I understood that, I had to go back full-time
racing. It was imperative I repair as quickly as possible and get back in a
racing car and leave the sport on my own terms."
So, what do we take away from Derek Daly in terms of the
world of investments? Aspiration and determination.
F1 Racer Derek Daly and Barby Barone of Barone’s Cars
and Capital Markets
Ever since that fateful day in Ireland when a young Derek
first laid eyes on that Brabham BT-6, he relentlessly pursued the aspiration to
become a race car driver. Similarly, investors have to envision and pursue
clear avenues which lead them to their desired financial outcome. Wealth
advisors inform their clients of choices and paths to create and maintain
purchasing power, and like Derek, reach the highest levels of their endeavors.
But unlike a Formula 1 driver, investors don’t need to be on
the podium; they just need to cross the finish line.
Which is not to say there won’t be bumps along the way. But
by showing the determination that Derek exhibited overcoming potential
disaster, an investor can stay the course and enjoy a long and rewarding
investment experience – and like Derek Daly – live a life on their terms.