Available to book
Derek Daly
Adversity
High Performance
Team Building
Derek Daly helps organizations build high-performance cultures and translate racing discipline into strategy. A former Formula One driver and bestselling author of Race to Win, A Champion's Path, and his new autobiography, Serial Survivor, he draws on decades of motorsport experience to guide teams.
Motorsport
Formula One
Sports Leadership
Athlete
Motivational
Inspirational
After Dinner Sports
Most Popular
After Dinner Speakers
Derek Daly is a former Formula One and IndyCar driver who built a second career translating motorsport's demands for speed, safety, and split-second decisions into lessons for business leaders. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he financed his first race car by working in the iron ore mines of Australia and lived in an old school bus while racing in England.
Derek won the 1977 British Formula 3 Championship, becoming the first driver from the Republic of Ireland to reach Formula One, made six starts at the Indianapolis 500, and won the 12 Hours of Sebring twice. He later spent 24 years as a television broadcaster with ESPN, NBC, CBS, and Fox Sports, earning USA Today's praise as "the best new face on sports television." He is the author of Race to Win, with a foreword by Mario Andretti, A Champion's Path, and Serial Survivor.
Derek survived one of the hardest crash impacts a driver has endured at the Michigan International Speedway in 1984, and returned to full-time racing after nineteen surgeries and three years of therapy. That experience shaped his understanding of how organizations build cultures where compliance does not replace responsibility and where intelligent risk, not recklessness, drives performance.
Audiences leave Derek's sessions with a clearer sense of how to shift from good to great, how trust and preparation help teams move fast without losing control, and how to balance safety with the pace their industry demands. Clients including Xerox, BMW, Zurich, and the US Department of Defense have all booked Derek to bring these lessons to their teams.
Topics, sessions and talks
Derek Daly recounts surviving one of the hardest crash impacts a driver has endured, and the safety initiative in racing that followed and continues today. He explains how his sport built some of the safest high-performance environments in history once attitudes changed and compliance stopped standing in for responsibility. The talk reframes risk as something to manage intelligently rather than avoid, leaving audiences with a sharper sense of where the line between speed and safety actually sits.
Derek Daly discusses transforming organizational culture from good to great to extraordinary, emphasizing the importance of leadership, teamwork, and continuous improvement in achieving exceptional success.
Speed, agility, and flawless execution define today's fastest-moving organizations. Derek Daly breaks down the critical difference between going fast and being fast, showing how trust and preparation become the cornerstones of teams that push against boundaries. He explains how front-line employees achieve trailblazing performance by staying highly aligned but loosely coupled, empowered to make quick decisions with limited information. Derek explores why corporations struggle to develop these traits, sharing stories that have energized audiences from California to the Czech Republic.
Derek Daly's high-stakes racing background gives him a distinctive, non-industry perspective on high performance, bringing creative and unconventional thinking to building a winning culture. His passionate delivery translates hard-won resilience into practical strategies audiences can apply immediately.
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frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
Email derek.daly@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Derek's availability and fees. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and a bit about your audience.
Derek Daly structures his sessions around first-person accounts from his racing career — including his 1984 crash at Michigan International Speedway and his six Indianapolis 500 starts — using these as concrete reference points to illustrate principles around risk management, team trust, and organisational performance.
Derek Daly speaks on risk management and intelligent safety culture, organisational culture transformation, and high-performance team execution under speed and pressure. He is a former Formula One and IndyCar driver who won the 1977 British Formula 3 Championship, made six starts at the Indianapolis 500, won the 12 Hours of Sebring twice, and spent 24 years as a broadcaster with ESPN, NBC, CBS, and Fox Sports.
No. PepTalk adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
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The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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