CORAL GABLES, FLA. (WSVN) - South Florida race-car driver Juan Manuel Correa is continuing his rehabilitation to return to formula racing after surviving a horrific crash at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
The 20-year-old Ecuadorian broke both his legs after a Formula 2 crash in August 2019.
The crash, which happened at 143 mph, ultimately claimed the life of French racing driver Anthoine Hubert, Correa’s friend.
“I didn’t even realize that I was going straight into the other car until I kind of looked up,” Correa said. “I realized … and I just saw a car right in front of me. I just braced for impact and boom. My car, because of the G-force, flipped upwards, rolled and just continued going for, like, 200 more meters, and by then, my feet had been fully smashed.”
Correa would then describe how he pulled himself from his mangled chassis and the immediate aftermath of the crash.
“I unstrapped myself and just literally crawled out of the car and kind of pulled myself with my hands because my legs were dangling,” Correa said. “My right leg actually got stuck inside the car because, you know, the leg was facing the wrong way around, and it got stuck inside the cockpit, so that was very painful as well.”
The 20-year-old was placed on life support for four days, and he would spend 13 days in a medically induced coma. He then underwent a 17-hour surgery on his two broken legs.
Correa still needs additional surgeries on his right leg, and he goes to physical therapy five days a week.
“It’s going to be a long process,” Omar Cordero, Correa’s trainer, said. “He’s going to go through hell. We have to train him first to get him walking, to get him mobile, to get him again moving in ways he was moving before.”
Despite his injuries, Correa still drives himself to the gym with the ultimate goal of returning to driving on the race track.
“I have some days now where it’s, like, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ I finished the rehab. They’re making me cry and doing massage on my scar tissue,” Correa said, “but whenever I have those kind of moments, I know why I’m doing it for, and I stay calm and keep doing it.”
While not at the gym, Correa could be seen refining his driving skills on tracks such as Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on his home simulator.
“We race on this track in F2, F1 and F3,” Correa said as he virtually lapped the circuit.
Correa believes it will take one year to fully recover from his injuries.
Before the crash, the 20-year-old was testing Alfa Romeo Racing’s Formula 1 car.
Correa’s goal is to race in 2021 in the proposed Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix outside of Hard Rock Stadium.
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