[Deathwatch] Phil Hill, race-car driver, 81

[Deathwatch Central]

Race-Car Driver Phil Hill, 81; Only U.S.-Born Formula One Champion

By Matt Schudel
Sunday, August 31, 2008

Phil Hill, a philosophically inclined race-car driver of the 1950s and
1960s who was the only U.S.-born driver to win the Formula One
international championship, died Aug. 28 at Community Hospital of the
Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, Calif. He was 81 and had Parkinson's
disease.

Mr. Hill competed when racing was a more gentlemanly but far more
dangerous sport than it is today. He gained his greatest fame in
endurance races that tested the limits of a driver's physical and
mental resources and once participated in a cross-country rally in
Mexico in which 10 drivers were killed.

Mr. Hill was a three-time winner of the 24-hour race at Le Mans,
France, and also won the 12-hour endurance race at Sebring, Fla., three
times. In 1961, he was in a season-long battle with his Ferrari
teammate, the German Count Wolfgang von Trips, for the Formula One
driving championship.

On Sept. 10, 1961, Mr. Hill took the lead during the first lap of the
Italian Grand Prix in Monza, Italy. As von Trips tried to make up
ground on the second lap, he spun out of control and went up an
embankment into the crowd before coming to a rest on the track. Von
Trips and 14 spectators were killed.

Mr. Hill, unaware of the seriousness of the crash, went on to win the
race, which gave him a bittersweet victory as the year's premier
driver. Days later, he was a pallbearer at von Trips's funeral.

"I never in my life experienced anything so profoundly mournful," he
said.

Mr. Hill remains the only driver born in the United States to win the
Formula One title. (Mario Andretti, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in
Italy, won the championship in 1978.)

Mr. Hill raced in open-cockpit cars with little more equipment than a
small helmet, goggles and gloves. He was quiet and introspective and
often spent his nights away from the track at opera houses across
Europe.

Before a race, he chain-smoked cigarettes and compulsively polished his
goggles, but behind the wheel, he was careful, composed and under
control. He never had an injury more serious than a nosebleed.

He excelled in bad weather, never more so than in 1958, when he and his
Belgian driving partner, Olivier Gendebien, first won the 24-hour race
at Le Mans. Mr. Hill drove primarily at night, through a torrential
rainstorm. Soaked to the skin, he sat on a bag of tools in order to
look over the top of his rain-streaked windshield.

More than 40 years later, he recalled the race for the Philhill.com Web
site: "It was impossible to see the smaller and slower cars in the rain
and darkness. I drove . . . at top speed and waited to hear the
resonance of exhaust in front of me. As soon as I could sense the
location of a car in the blackness, it was a flash of light, the bare
outline of car and driver and then back into the darkness, peering
ahead for the next one."

Mr. Hill won at Le Mans again in 1961 and 1962 and won first place at
Sebring's 12-hour race in 1958, 1959 and 1961. Despite his success,
those years were marred by the deaths of five of Mr. Hill's racing
teammates, besides von Trips. Always mindful of the risks of racing,
the introspective Mr. Hill adopted a stoic approach to his sport.

"When they told me the news that Trips was dead, and more than a dozen
spectators with him, I was stunned, deeply shocked," he said after his
1961 Formula One victory. "The papers reported that I broke down and
sobbed, but that was not true. When you've lived as close to death and
danger as long as I have, then your emotional defenses are equal to
almost anything."

Philip Toll Hill Jr. was born in Miami on April 20, 1927, and grew up
in Santa Monica, Calif. When he was 12, an aunt bought him a Model T,
which he took apart and rebuilt.

He left the University of Southern California to pursue his interest in
cars and won his first race at 19.

In the early 1950s, he competed in California, Mexico and South
America. Once, in a poorly marked road race in Venezuela that Mr. Hill
described as "some sort of surrealist nightmare," he took a wrong turn
and found himself driving 100 mph on a street filled with commuters.

By 1956, he was climbing to the top of the sport and won a coveted spot
on the Ferrari team. In 1960, when he won the Italian Grand Prix, he
became the last driver to win a Formula One race with a front-engine
car. (Today, all Formula One cars have the engine behind the driver's
seat.)

Mr. Hill won his final race in England in 1967 and retired at 39. He
became a commentator for ABC's "Wide World of Sports" and had a
successful business restoring vintage autos. He road-tested cars, wrote
historical articles for Road & Track magazine and served as a judge at
antique car competitions. He also collected player pianos and other
antique musical instruments.

Several times during his career, Mr. Hill took temporary leaves from
racing, only to return to the driver's seat.

"When I love motor racing less," he said in 1961, "my own life will
become worth more to me, and I will be less willing to risk it."

Survivors include his wife, Alma Hill of Santa Monica; two children; a
stepdaughter; a sister; and four grandchildren.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary