F1 History
THE BRUTAL CRASH THAT INSPIRED SONNY HAYES' CHARACTER IN 'F1 THE MOVIE'
F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne looks at the heart-stopping crash that inspired the backstory of Sonny Hayes.
At the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix weekend, Martin Donnelly crashed into the barrier at an estimated 160mph, throwing him out of his Lotus 102 and leaving him motionless on track. The devastating accident cut short his F1 career and changed his life forever.
Thirty-five years later, Donnelly's journey helped inspire the team behind F1 The Movie, with the backstory of Brad Pitt's character Sonny Hayes based on the Northern Irishman's experience. Hall of Fame Journalist David Tremayne remembers the day that changed Donnelly's life...
There is an ugliness to violence. Not what you see in the movies, but the real stuff. When something so far beyond the norm of everyday life happens right in front of you.
We’re all used to seeing cars spin, or even crash, either when we’re watching the TV coverage or spectating at a race. But this real-time stuff, that happens right before you when something really goes wrong, with all of its horror and brutal soundtrack… That’s something else. And it never really leaves you.
We were in Jerez for first practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, on September 28th, 1990. I was standing at the entry to the second of the two oft-unnamed right-handers at the end of the 2.6209-mile lap, Turns 14 and 15. Was 15 called Ferrari? I never knew for sure. Now they’re mainly named after motorcycle racers.
There were eight minutes left in – what in those far-flung days – was the first qualifying session, and I had doubtless smiled earlier when I saw my mate Martin Donnelly momentarily top the timesheets with a lap of 1m 22.659s.
We’d been friends since his British F3 season in 1986. With great wit he was often known then as ‘Yer Man’, because he was Irish. A year later, victory in the typhoon-spoiled Macau F3 race created the moniker Mr Juicy after the sponsor of the car in which he dominated. That remains his nickname to this day.
We knew that his Lamborghini V12-powered, Camel-sponsored Lotus 102 wasn’t the greatest car out there, but he’d been having a good season, and it looked like a decent career lay ahead.
I happened to be looking back to the first of these corners, T14, which were taken flat-out in sixth at around 140mph. When, momentarily, the yellow car seemed to go out of sight, my mind was tricked into thinking of the entry to the pits at Magny-Cours, where that does actually happen.
I was just mentally protesting that thought when there was an explosion as the car hit the far end of the barrier behind which I was standing, at undiminished speed. And then it disappeared in a violent shower of smithereens. It had literally blown to pieces, with the sound of a giant dustbin being crushed.
Like the images, I have never forgotten the sudden, terrible silence that hung so menacingly afterwards, as we realised that the car had simply just disintegrated. And that the blue and orange helmet on the figure that now lay so horribly inert in the road identified the driver as Martin.
And then the keening began, somewhere over my left shoulder. For moments it seemed like the only sound, a terrible, agonised emission of a tortured soul. I learned later that it was Martin’s friend Ed, who owned Ed’s Diner on the A11 up by Snetterton, and had accompanied him to the race. I’ve rarely heard greater distress in a human voice.
Then the other sounds began to impinge: cries, weeping, the shouts of marshals… The scene descended into mayhem.
I remember that Pierluigi Martini and then Ayrton Senna both stopped their cars in positions which offered protection to their fallen colleague. I found that camaraderie profoundly moving.
Looking at Martin, sprawled on the track with the back of the seat the largest part that remained in contact with him, like a backpack, I had no doubt in my head that I had just been a witness to the first death of a driver I called a friend. And somehow just standing there, watching things unravel, seemed so disrespectfully indecorous.
I had started to head back to the paddock when I encountered another friend, Derek Warwick, at that time Martin’s team mate. Horror was written all over his face and I told him that I feared the worst. I just didn’t see how Martin could have survived.
When Derek continued to the scene I went back with him. He impressed me then, directing marshals, giving them guidance, until the medical car arrived carrying the great Professor Sid Watkins. I have no doubt that Prof saved Martin’s life in that moment.
The session had, of course, been red-flagged the moment the severity of the accident had become apparent. Some 45 minutes later it was restarted, and Ayrton put his McLaren at the top with an extraordinary lap of 1m 18.900s.
In Adelaide later that year I asked him about the resumption of that first session. I remain convinced to this day that he had gone out to teach Jerez that it could not destroy the human spirit. Had he done that to prove something to himself? He had peered into the black pit that all drivers fear if they let themselves think too much?
It took him 37 seconds to answer, his voice a whisper you had to strain to hear, his eyes moist. The atmosphere was electric.
“For myself,” he said eventually. “I did it because anything like that can happen to any of us. I knew it was something bad, but I wanted to see for myself.” And, tellingly, he added, “Afterwards, I didn’t know how fast I could go. Or how slow.”
There was another long pause after I asked whether he had to be brave to do that?
Those famous brown eyes were now swimming. “As a racing driver there are some things you have to go through, to cope with. Sometimes they are not human, yet you go through it and do them just because of the feelings that you get by driving, that you don’t get in another profession.
"Some of the things are not pleasant, but in order to have some of the nice things, you have to face them.”
Well, he faced them that day, and I never admired him more than I did in those moments.
But he was not the weekend’s sole hero. Derek had already survived his own spectacular inversion at Monza, where he so valiantly ran back for the spare car, but he knew that had been his own mistake. This time there was no question that something had broken on Martin’s car. The spring/dampers and pullrod units were mounted on the bottom at the front of the chassis and it was a mounting that had failed. It had just pulled out of the carbon fibre monocoque.
But Derek also knew that Team Lotus were circling the drain. And that two fans had won a Camel prize to accompany the team that weekend, and that all they had experienced thus far was trauma and fear. The team considered withdrawing, but found somewhere that could effect a critical beefing-up of the suspension, and the decision was left until Saturday morning. Then, Derek had a closed-doors meeting in the garage and asked the engineers exactly what they had done.
He had let his family believe that he wasn’t going to drive, but eventually he made the decision that he would, and suffered the understandable opprobrium they threw at him. He had been promised that the strengthened parts would not break, and that they were safe enough for him to go through Martin’s corner flat on his first lap. That confirmed his decision, and indeed he was flat through there when practice started.
He would qualify 10th and was running seventh with 11 laps to go when the gearbox broke. He set the sixth fastest lap, behind Riccardo Patrese, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, Nicola Larini and Gerhard Berger.
Heroism comes in many forms, but where Ayrton’s may have been born of anger in that first session, in Derek’s case it was raw and cold. I have never forgotten the horror and the heroism of that long-ago afternoon in Jerez.
And when, many years later when he was an FIA driver steward, Marty and I stood together on a Grand Prix grid for the first time since the 1990 Portuguese GP that preceded the Spanish race – memory suggests it was in South Korea in 2011 – I know that at least one of us found the moment completely obliterated the ability to speak.
