WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Hurley Haywood sometimes wonders if he’s seeing things when David Donohue slides behind the wheel of the No. 58 Brumos Racing Porsche.
“Mark was on the road a lot, so I think David’s memory of his dad is somewhat limited,” said the 60-year-old Haywood, who raced with Mark Donohue more than three decades ago. “Yet the mannerisms and facial expressions, just the way David carries himself, are so much like his father that it’s sometimes really eerie.
“It’s kind of like talking to his dad,” Haywood said. “Those are traits that David was too young to consciously pick up, really. You don’t fall far from the tree, I guess.”
Despite a late start in racing, David Donohue has done all right. After a brief stint in NASCAR’s Busch and Craftsman Truck Series, he’s carved a niche in the past five years driving a Daytona Prototype in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series.
“David is exceptional. He’s proven time and time again that he’s extremely fast,” said Haywood, whose 10 wins in endurance classics — the 24 Hours of Daytona five times, the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times, and the 12 Hours of Sebring twice — are the most in auto racing history. “I think there’s always pressure when you have a father that’s really famous and accomplished a lot. The son is always under pressure to perform up to expectations.”
David Donohue was only 8 when his father died at age 38 after an accident in practice for the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix. Although David’s mother made sure he and brother Michael never forgot their dad, she also made sure they steered clear of the fast lane.
“I pushed them away from the racetrack and away from all my friends that were involved,” Sue Donohue said. “I didn’t want my sons involved in it. I thought there were other things they could do than race cars.”
Still, both were driven to try. Michael raced in the Skip Barber Series but quit because he didn’t like the instability of the sport. David, meanwhile, quietly began racing sports cars as an amateur in 1991 after graduating from Lehigh University with a finance degree.
“I didn’t break the news to mom. I just kind of went and did it,” said David, who was named Eastern Motor Racing Association’s GT driver champion and rookie of the year. “She wasn’t too thrilled about it. She couldn’t stop my dad from doing it, so she had less chance of stopping me.”
“It was inevitable,” Sue Donohue said. “There’s a lot of Mark there.”
Former NASCAR great Bobby Allison once called Mark Donohue the finest road racer this country ever produced. Donohue, who had an engineering degree, won 57 major events in a variety of cars — Camaros, Lolas, McLarens, Porsches. In the 1968 Trans-Am Series, he had 10 victories in 12 races and posted 29 wins in 55 career starts. He also won the 1972 Indy 500 (Roger Penske’s first), the inaugural IROC series, and the 1973 Winston Western 500 at Riverside driving Penske’s No. 16 AMC Matador. No outsider has won a NASCAR Cup race since.
“Anyone who ever knew him doesn’t dispute his driving talent. He was among the best,” said David, who won three races in the 2003 Rolex Series season and finished second in driver points. “He could take a decent car and make it a race-winning car where a lot of guys were stuck with what they were given.
“It’s not like my dad was the only driver-engineer — Bruce McLaren and Dan Gurney were engineers — but he was a pioneer because he had other engineers with him. He wasn’t all alone.”
Despite success as an amateur, David Donohue had no illusions of trying to make a living in racing. Perhaps because of an accident he had with Bob Grossman.
“I was crushed. I had never hit another car on the racetrack before, and it was a guy who knew my dad,” Donohue said. “I walked up to him, and he turned and looked at me, ‘You did that!’ I was just silent. And then he says, ‘The last person who did that to me was your old man.’ We just started laughing.”
Donohue’s passion for the sport skyrocketed after the 1991 induction ceremony at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame.
“Mario Andretti and Johnny Rutherford and Al Unser Jr. were talking to me like we were old friends almost,” Donohue said. “I was kind of a kid. I didn’t know anything, and they’re talking to me about racing. I was just blown away by these legends just talking to me — almost with the assumption that I should be racing.
“I felt incomplete, like I had done something wrong, had not pursued something that was my destiny.”
When the country dipped into recession the next year, Donohue’s destiny became assured.
“I couldn’t find a real job, and my wife Jodi was just reading my face,” he said. “She said, ‘If you’re really thinking about doing this, you’d better get started or you’ll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life.’ And then she tagged on, ‘You’d better make it work in five years or you’re going to have to go find a real job.’”
He has. Also on his resume is a win in the GT-2 class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and he shares another bond with his dad. Ten days before he died, Mark Donohue established a world closed-course speed record of 221 mph at Talladega Superspeedway in a Porsche 917/30. In 2005, to commemorate the 30th anniversary, David set a closed-course record of 196.301 mph at Talladega in a stock Porsche Carrera GT.
“That was pretty special,” Donohue said. “We were able to get flat on the gas all the way around the track in a street car. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done — I can’t wait to do it again.”
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