Martin Donnelly cannot remember the crash that almost killed him. Not only once, but three times.
In qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix in 1990, mechanical failure caused his Lotus to crash into the barriers at 160mph.
The scenes that came next were harrowing, as Donnelly’s stricken body, still strapped to his seat, lay in the middle of the track, surrounded by pieces and shards of his car that had been split in two by the violent impact.
When Professor Sid Watkins’, Formula 1’s key medical and safety delegate, arrived at the scene, Donnelly’s face was turning blue due to swallowing his tongue.
After stabilising his condition, he was transferred to Seville and eventually to Watkins’ hospital in London.
The Northern Ireland driver had sustained head and lung injuries, and both his legs were broken – to the point where it took Watkins’ intervention to stop Spanish surgeons amputating his left leg.
While he was in an induced coma, his organs started to fail and his heart stopped twice. His condition was so bad he was given the last rites by a priest.
It started with a phone call from a withheld number on a Saturday night in April 2023, when Donnelly was sitting watching TV in his Norfolk home.
“You know what it is like, you get these withheld calls on your mobile. I thought it was a cold caller, so I wen’t ‘Hello, who’s this? ! ‘.
“The voice at the other end said, ‘is that Martin? ‘.
“‘Yes, what do you want? ! ‘. I was almost aggressive.
“He said, ‘it’s Lewis’. ‘Lewis who? ‘.
“‘It’s Lewis Hamilton’. “
It’s the best cold call Donnelly had ever received.
The seven-time world champion, who was an executive producer, pitched the idea that Donnelly’s crash would become the back story of Brad Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes.
Pitt ‘a really nice guy’
Donnelly had first met Pitt, the film’s star, at Silverstone when the American called him a “hero” after watching footage of his crash.
It wasn’t long before Donnelly, 61, was on set at Brands Hatch, helping to guide Kosinski about the details of a Formula 1 garage in the 1990s, including set up and the engineers’ uniform.
When the cameras were rolling, Pitt was there, standing at the front of the garage. At the other end of the car, behind the rear wing and out of camera shot, Donnelly was watching on.
And then a voice rang out.
“‘Hey Martin, where should I be standing? ‘. “
“I looked around and there was nobody else called Martin,” recalled Donnelly.
“He was asking me to direct him around the garage. I had a superstition of getting in at the left hand side and putting my left leg in first, and he does exactly the same thing in the movie.
The film shows the aftermath of Donnelly’s crash, with Hayes’ blue helmet imposed onto the orange of the real-life driver.
If movie-goers were now aware of Donnelly’s accident, they would find it hard to believe the crash site had not been mocked up.
Such was Donnelly’s influence in the production, he was given a special mention in the film’s credits and Pitt even gave him a personal shoutout while on stage at the London premiere.
“My kids Charlotte and Owen were there and they turned to me and said ‘Dad, dad, he just mentioned your name! ‘.
“I laughed it off, saying ‘it’s just Brad’. About a third of the way through the movie he came up the steps to two empty seats and sat beside Owen, my youngest.
‘If you don’t remember it, you can’t fear it’
Despite the serious injuries sustained, Donnelly was determined to get back to Formula 1.
Weighing just 53 kilos, Donnelly visited Willi Dungl in Austria in 1991, who helped get Niki Lauda back in a Formula 1 car just six weeks after his infamous crash in 1976.
“I went there naively thinking I’d spend two months there, he would wave his magic wand and I’d be back in F1 driving cars again.
“The motivation was to get back into F1, the accident was just an inconvenience. “
He tested for Jordan at Silverstone in February 1993. There were still lingering after effects from his accident, which included nerve damage in a left leg that was now two-and-a-half inches shorter than his right.
But once he left the pitlane, he was back in his “happy place”.
“It didn’t feel like two-and-a-half-years, it felt like weeks,” Donnelly said.
“If you don’t remember the accident, you don’t fear it. “
However, unlike on the big screen, there was no Hollywood F1 return for Donnelly.
Just hours before his accident, Lotus had taken up an option on Donnelly to drive for them the following season with Jordan, Tyrrell and Arrows vying for his signature.
However, the crash meant he barely scratched the surface of what would have been a lucrative contract.
Donnelly had competed against, and often beaten, the likes of Damon Hill, David Coulthard, and Eddie Irvine in the junior ranks, but had to watch their careers grow while his own F1 dreams came to an end.
He added the death of Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994 was the moment he knew it was time to halt his pursuit.
The pair were friends after racing through the junior categories together, and Senna, who stopped at the scene of Donnelly’s accident and visited him in hospital, had even offered financial support in his recovery.
“Ayrton had his millions made and he was a three-time world champion, but he had nobody to leave it to.
“He had no offspring, no wife. I thought, I’ve died three times, I’m still involved in the sport I love and had a young son at the time, so I just let it go. “
Donnelly is still involved in the sport he loves, just in a different capacity. He was a drivers’ steward for Formula 1, and still competes in the national racing and runs his own Martin Donnelly Academy in Norfolk.
“Time is a healer and you adjust your way of life.
Related topics
- Formula 1
- Northern Ireland Sport
