To the names of life-savers such as Mike Hailwood, Arturo Merzario, Guy Edwards and Brett Lunger, we can now add another hero. On the first weekend of September, Loek Hartog showed outstanding bravery and selflessness in rescuing Ollie Millroy from his burning Ferrari 296 GT3 in a China GT round at Shanghai’s grand prix circuit. Watching the accident was like being teleported back to scenes inhabited by those 1970s Formula 1 warriors, such was the ferocity of the blaze.

Incredibly, Millroy was back at his Dubai home two weeks after the accident, yet retains no memory from 30 seconds beforehand to one hour after. His injuries? “Six broken ribs, a punctured lung, broken hand, broken collarbone and fractured vertebra in my neck, and a lot of soft tissue bruising. I was very concussed as well and it took a few days for that to wear off.” But he is adamant that Hartog’s actions saved his life.

In this social-media age, the organisers and Shanghai rescue crews have taken a slating for perceived inaction. “I don’t want to say too much at the moment until the investigation’s complete, because I don’t have all the facts myself,” mulls Millroy. “But it’s quite clear from the video that something wasn’t right. The fact that there was zero chance I was getting out of that car alive if it wasn’t for Loek, no driver should ever be in that position. That’s something that Loek and I want to achieve from this story – we want to raise awareness of this as much as we can and make sure it’s a wake-up call for the organisers around the world, the FIA and everyone, to make sure that they’ve got the best marshals, fire crews, equipment, to make sure everything’s up to date and all extinguishers are checked, because I was lucky.”

To recap, Surrey-raised Millroy has plied his trade in pro-am GT3 racing since switching from the single-seater ladder in 2012. He was running in the top six at Shanghai, just turning into the hairpin at the end of the long back straight, when his Ferrari was cannoned into by the identical car of David Chen, who had collided with the BMW of American Neil Verhagen, sending both out of control. The 23-year-old Hartog, a rising star of the Porsche family, was running a few places down the order, saw the accident, and immediately pulled over to rescue Millroy, sacrificing his own race. The 6ft 6in Dutchman (no wonder he never tried single-seaters!) has since been fêted around the world.

Were the pair friends beforehand? “No, not at all,” replies Millroy. “We knew of each other, but we’d never actually met or had a conversation. Now we’re best friends, really close. We talk every day and we’ve got this mission and this journey that we want to go on now of improving safety.

“He came to the hospital straight after the accident. That evening I had no idea what had happened and Loek was the first to explain to me, showing me the videos. He was the first to tell me what he did, and then he was testing at Shanghai the following week and he came to have some dinner with us in my hospital room and a bit of a catch-up, which was really nice and quite emotional as well.”

“I would say I enjoy racing now the most I’ve ever done”

The injuries will all heal, hopefully in time for Millroy to make his comeback in next January’s Daytona 24 Hours – he is a regular in the IMSA SportsCar enduros thanks to his long-standing relationship with bronze-rated amateur Brendan Iribe. The bigger challenge for this devoted family man (as we chat, he is on the road to the local kart track with eight-year-old son Mylo) is the mind: “There’s a lot to take in, trying not to think about what could have happened, but it’s difficult not to, and how it would have left Fern [Mrs Millroy] and the kids and stuff like that. It’s going to take a while to get my head around it and rebuild.

“I’m lucky that I grew up in an era of motor sport where I never got in the car thinking about getting hurt. I’ve never said goodbye to Fern and the kids when I go away racing, thinking there’s a chance I might not make it home. I guess you could say that we take it for granted a little bit, and that was a wake-up call for the whole world that, wow, it can suddenly go very, very wrong. There are definitely still areas for improvement when it comes to safety. I’m sure Ferrari are investigating to see if there’s anything that can be done to the design to prevent that happening, and obviously the organisers and the circuits.”

“My wife couldn’t find out what condition I was in for two hours”

At 36, Millroy theoretically still has a long innings ahead in his chosen arena. He was a one-time race winner in Formula Renault UK in 2010-11, when his peers included future stars such as Will Stevens (they grew up locally so were best buddies), Tom Blomqvist, Alex Lynn, Oliver Rowland, Harry Tincknell, Jack Hawksworth and Nick Yelloly: “We just didn’t have the budget to stay in formula racing for long enough, and I made the decision to be in the best place I can to try and make a living from this. For me it was pretty obvious early on that I was going to be in pro-am racing. I love endurance racing, I love driving GT3 cars and I really enjoy coaching the bronze driver as well. It creates this really special team bond and you get so much satisfaction out of their performance as well as your own.”

Everyone knows that a driver line-up’s success in such disciplines relies heavily on the form of the amateur, and such was Iribe’s progress that, aboard Inception Racing McLarens, the Maryland video-game-programming mogul and Millroy claimed titles in the 2021 International GT Open pro-am class, the ’22 Asian Le Mans Series GT classification and the same year’s GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Gold Cup. They’ve also made three starts together in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

“Brendan’s a really awesome team-mate, a good guy – he’s a great bronze,” asserts Millroy. “The last couple of years have been pretty tough in IMSA but we had a win at Indianapolis last year, which was really good. I would actually say I enjoy racing now the most I’ve ever done.”

Inception – run by British sports car specialist Optimum Motorsport – nowadays competes with Ferraris, the same marque as Millroy has campaigned this year in China with Taiwanese team AAI Motorsports. Here, he has fulfilled a similar co-driver/coach role to Betty Chen, daughter of team boss and former Millroy co-driver Jun San Chen (they are no relation to David Chen, whose contact triggered the Shanghai fire): “She really does make big improvements when we’re driving together. We’re already talking about what we’ll be doing next year.”

And, as a sideline to the racing, testing and coaching, Millroy works as a stunt driver. “My biggest stunt was Shanghai recently!” he laughs. “I started with some TV adverts and stuff, and then my first major film was Mission: Impossible 5 – Rogue Nation in 2014, which is actually where I met my wife, shooting a car chase in Morocco. I’ve done another Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Mummy, Men in Black, and most recently F1: The Movie, which was good fun.” Here, Millroy drove one of the Carlin-run converted F2 film cars: “Really cool bits of kit with the Mecachrome F2 engine in. It was the first time I’d driven a single-seater since Formula Renault, straight after F1 qualifying at Spa in one of those things. Talk about jumping in at the deep end.”

Did that reawaken a passion for single-seaters? “I’d love to have a couple of days somewhere like Donington in a proper F3 car,” Millroy reflects. “I loved the time that I had in Formula Renault but I never look back with any regrets. I still feel like I made the right decision to move into GT racing. I drive some awesome cars in awesome races, making a living from it. If someone had offered me that from the start I’d have bitten their hand off for it. I’m living most people’s dreams.”

But he also lived many people’s nightmare. And, as a result, Millroy’s work with Hartog can hopefully bring improvement to the sport. This isn’t just about safety, but also procedures. “We want to help prevent these accidents, but then also have a support system in place for when these things do happen,” he explains. “For example, my wife couldn’t even find out what condition I was in for two hours after the crash because no one had her contact details.

“She heard on TV that I’d got out of the car on my own, and then she was getting messages from other drivers to say, ‘No that’s not true, Ollie was pulled out of the car.’ As soon as something happens there should be a system that kicks into place to make family members aware. We’ve got lots of ideas, we’ve been approached by a lot of companies with technology that can help. Our goal is, if we can save one life by pushing for some changes, then that’ll be incredible.”