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Phil Hill: Formula One racing driver who won the 1961 world title
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/phil-hill-formula-one-racing-driver-who-won-the-1961-world-title-913251.html
It was a supreme irony that when each of America's Formula 1 world champions won their crowns at Monza in Italy, their moments of success were tainted by tragedies involving their team-mates. When Ronnie Peterson died from injuries sustained in the 1978 Italian Grand Prix, the day after the naturalised American Mario Andretti had done enough to secure the title, it was an eerie echo of the most bittersweet moment of Phil Hill's life, 17 years earlier.
Philip Hill was born in Miami, Florida in 1927, but moved to Santa Monica in California as he pursued an education in business studies. That coincided with the postwar emergence of motorsport on the west coast, and by 1950 he was using skills he had acquired as a mechanic to prepare his own MG TC. That was replaced by a Jaguar XK120, which helped to inculcate in him the love of fine machinery that shaped the rest of his life.
His breakthrough came in 1952 when he started racing Alan Guiberson's Ferrari. He finished sixth in the famed Carrera PanAmericana that year, then came back to finish second in 1954. Always a deep thinker, Hill was aware even then of the perils of his chosen profession, and in between those two results had considered retirement after a poor performance in the 1953 event.
Victory in the 1955 SCCA Championship cemented his burgeoning reputation and second place in the 1956 Buenos Aires 1,000-kilometre sportscar race led to a works drive for Ferrari. His career with the famed marque would last until 1962, unusual by the standards of the irascible Enzo Ferrari's day.
In 1957 and 1959 he demonstrated his versatility by setting international class records for MG at the Bonneville Salt Flats, while 1958 brought the first of three victories in the Le Mans 24 Hour classic (sharing with theB elgian Olivier Gendebien), plus successes in Buenos Aires and Sebring.
He also made his grand prix debut for Ferrari, taking thirds in Italy and Morocco. In 1960 he scored his maiden grand prix victory at Monza, the last-ever success for a front-engined car. His sensitive nature was tested to the limit at this highly dangerous time, as he saw his team-mates Alberto Ascari, Eugenio Castellotti, Alfonso de Portago, Luigi Musso and Peter Collins perish in accidents.
And then came Monza, 1961. Hill and his team-mate Count Wolfgang von Trips vied for the world championship that season, as only Stirling Moss's Lotus could beat their dominant "shark nose" Ferrari 156s. Hill won in Belgium and Italy, Trips in the Netherlands and Britain. But an accident on the second lap of the Italian Grand Prix cost Trips, and 14 spectators, their lives, handing the title to the American.
"I didn't know he was dead, until I came into the pits at the end," he recounted. "I said, 'How's Trips?' I knew it was him, because we got an order board soon after the accident and he was missing from it. I saw the way Carlo Chiti evaded my question, and I just knew right then...
"We got along fine, but we were very different types," he said of his fallen team-mate. "Trips was much more extrovert than I was, for one thing, and he knew nothing about cars – except how to drive them. At Ferrari they really liked that, because back then they didn't think it was the driver's place to do anything else!
"All year long, it was him or me for the championship, and if we'd been really close friends it would have been a hell of a lot harder to be sufficiently competitive with him. Face it, it's not a normal situation race drivers are in: You try to beat the other guys all day, and then at night you're supposed to forget all that."
Hill, and his fellow Californian racer Richie Ginther, travelled to Trips's funeral by train from Milan. Always a brilliant, laconic raconteur, he told the tale of how they avoided Ferrari's troublesome wife, Laura, as they drove back to Modena in the modest Peugeot 404 that was all a Ferrari world champion merited back then.
"At Trips's reception, all of a sudden Mrs Ferrari said, 'Pheeleel, are you going back now?' She'd decided shedidn't like Amerigo Manicardi – one of her husband's managers – so she said maybe Richie and I would let her go back with us. 'Where are you going?' she asked. I panicked, and said, 'We're going to... Stockholm!' It was the first thing that came into my head! She said, 'What a shame', and meanwhile Manicardi's doing all these winks and everything...
"Fortunately for us, that 404 had very high backs to the seats. We're going along back to Modena, and all of a sudden Richie says, 'Duck! Duck!' Instinctively, I just did what he said. He says, 'It's the old lady!' – and we're supposed to be in Stockholm!
"The next day we get to the factory, and there's Manicardi. I said, 'Christ, Richie saw you at the last second! I didn't even see you – I just ducked...' And Manicardi told us that Mrs Ferrari had said, 'Manicardi! Isn't that Pheeleel's car?' He said, 'I don't know – there's nobody in it!' And she just said, 'Oh, that's all right, then.' That was what it was like, living with Mrs Ferrari."
Hill quit Ferrari in the management walk-out of 1962 that led to the formation of the troubled rival ATS, and never managed to resurrect his F1 career with the British Cooper team. But he also kept sportscar racing, first with Ford's GT programme and then Jim Hall's American Chaparral team. He won the Nurburgring 1,000km with Jo Bonnier in 1966 in a Chaparral 2D, then partnered Mike Spence to triumph in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatchin 1967 in a 2F before announcing his retirement.
One of the most cultured and introspective men ever to drive a race car, he would smoke nervously before a race, yet he excelled on the fastest circuits and in the worst conditions. In retirement he indulged his lifelong passion for music and vintage cars, wrote for magazines, commentated on television and helped nurture the racing career of his son, Derek.
"Whatever else, no one could be accused back then of doing it for the money!" he said of a sport that he loved for another 40 years. "For one thing, there wasn't any; for another, it was so dangerous back then you'd have had to be crazy to do it unless it was something you had to do."
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