Damon Hill on dad Graham: 'Had he not died I doubt I would have become a racing driver'

“But we could have a laugh. He was a very funny man, loved to muck around. So on the one hand he was a disciplinarian and on the other he was a clown. So you end up thinking, ‘Which bit can I do, then?’ Can I do larking about? Yes. But when you overstepped the mark he’d cut you down, because he had a way of saying the thing that would go to the quick and a lot of people felt the sting of that. But you know, he wasn’t a bad man; he was kind beneath it all. He was a bloody hard worker and lived life to the full. He left a pretty indelible impression.” In an earlier interview, Damon summarised his father’s place in the public’s affections thus: “He had a quality of humanity, which is the thing that makes sports people transcend whatever it is they’ve done. He transcended being just a mere sports person.” The raconteur, the flirt and the clown were the public face. The grimly determined character behind the mask answered to no one.

“He was totally in charge of his own life,” says Damon. “It’s like that recent Niki Lauda tweet where he said, ‘I do whatever I want and no one tells me what to do.’ That applied to dad. They are of a type: self-made men and there was a whole generation of them in Britain in the ’60s. They made their own judgment calls. He said he hated being in the navy, that it was two years wasted. But I don’t know. I think maybe it taught him quite a lot actually.

“If you listen to my dad then listen to Colin Chapman it’s weird; their voices are almost identical. There’s a slightly squeaky intonation with a hint of north London thrown in. Then the tight moustache and the slicked-back hair and their mannerisms. It’s like these people were so long together they became parodies of each other. They were sort of WWII pilot archetypes. You can see how propaganda works. You present a nation being made up of these characters and then people just slot in. David Niven, my dad, Terry Thomas, Errol Flynn – all fit in the same mould. These people formed the archetype, an image that becomes common currency. Just look at Dick Dastardly – that is my dad! In the ’50s they lived out of each others’ pockets. There’s a great picture of my mum with Hazel Chapman on a day out down in Brighton.”

Graham Hill and Colin Chapman were of a time and place and each answered only to themselves. But they partnered up – in 1958-59 and again in 1967-69 – through mutual interest. “We used to go to their place,” Damon says, “and even though I was young I always sensed them not fitting together very well. They were each their own men.

“Similarly, I think when Bernie Ecclestone bought Brabham and dad was the driver, Bernie had a bit of trouble accommodating him. Dad, Chapman, Bernie – can you think of any more self-determined, independent characters? Dad was at that time almost transcending the sport, in that he’d become the public face of motor racing. He jokingly called himself ‘The Ambassador’, and he was a galvanising force. So Bernie was having to deal with this guy who was actually getting to that senior position in the sport of being a voice and spokesperson.

“But dad didn’t think in the same way as Bernie. Not many people – if anyone – was going to catch Bernie out but later on, when Bernie began to build up the teams as a group and Dad had his own team, he was not part of that group and I think it may have been that he’d sided with Paul Metternich at the FIA. I’m not sure how that would have all panned out. There was a kind of respect there but Dad and Bernie had similar histories in a way. It was the wild west in those days. Because there were no rules yet telling them what they couldn’t do. Then if anyone said, ‘Hey, that’s not right’ it was too late; they’d already done it. Because of that, they made their own lives. When you get two people together like that they don’t get on very well in the same room.”

“There’s a lot of mythology about it – being resigned to one’s fate, which is seen as being a brave philosophy. But actually it’s not very nice for everyone around you. The fear just crept in. At first you’re too young to really understand it but you know there’s something going on that’s not very good. Dad’s mood was very reflective if something bad had happened. In Mr Monaco he talks about Jo Siffert dying. I was there that day at Brands Hatch [as an 11-year-old in 1971]. We were sitting in the grandstands and the au pair who looked after us took our hands – me and my sister – and led us away. With black smoke rising up in the air. Not a very nice afternoon when your daddy’s in the race. But you don’t… you’re not quite there yet. You’re kinda getting it but then you’re full of bravado. A lot of this stuff you carry around inside you and you don’t realise it’s there until something happens, like Imola ’94, and then it all kind of kicks off. When you’re growing up you don’t properly deal with it. You just put on a brave face and carry on. Nowadays they might call it post-traumatic.”

Graham’s retirement from the cockpit – announced at the 1975 British GP – seemed to offer the hope of all that fear dissolving, and the chance for Damon’s relationship with his father to develop fully. “There was a huge sense of relief when he decided to stop – from all of us, my mum especially. I was there at Silverstone when he did his lap of honour and waved at everyone and it was a bit of a tear in the eye moment. I think he wanted everyone to say, ‘Oh it’s a really sad day’ but actually everyone was thinking, ‘Thank God for that’. So when he died it was kind of a double blow. Because you’d seen him put an end to the most dangerous chapter of his life and then he lasted only four more months.”

Damon’s enthusiasm at this stage wasn’t for racing cars but motorbikes. “I tried karts once or twice. Dad saw me driving and I was all chipper because I thought I’d done well. He responded with his classic kind of reserved and slightly in-check compliments. He withheld his enthusiasm because he obviously didn’t want me to do it.

“Well, you can’t do one thing yourself then tell you children not to do it. So that was always in my mind. I was asked from a very early age whether I was going to be a racing driver. Because I’m very contrary my inside answer was, ‘No, I’m bloody not. Especially if you want me to’ and I also had very little interest in cars. A motorbike to me was an appealing thing. They clicked completely but I didn’t quite get cars. It lacks a dimension. You can get on a bike and have much more freedom and you use your whole body and stuff.

“After dad died I was pretty rudderless for quite some time and totally off the leash. A few of dad’s friends tried to be helpful but I didn’t want any. I could sense a lot of my friends were mindful of what their parents might say about what they were up to in a way that I wasn’t, so I always felt sorry for them. I wasn’t under that restraint. I don’t think my dad was under that restraint from his parents either.

“You wouldn’t have got me in one of those cars going around the Nürburgring in the wet with no crash barriers”

“Had dad not died I doubt very much I would have become a racing driver. Going into cars from bikes was just because there was a commercial imperative for me to do so. Because I failed initially – I didn’t get to the finals at the Winfield race school, didn’t do well in my first season, it bugged me and that’s where the competitive bug comes out. I think every very competitive person has a chip on their shoulder somewhere. A raw nerve where if someone suggests that you can’t do something, you recoil and react. Then it all kicks off – and you’re off again, the blinkers are on. But dad’s was quite a legacy to live with – he set quite a high bar. Comparison was inevitable but if you’re a racing driver you’re constantly compared anyway, to every other driver. His career record was amazing. But he only won 14 GPs! [Damon won 21.] If he was still around I’d never let him forget it! But you wouldn’t have got me in one of those cars going around the Nürburgring in the wet with no crash barriers.”

It’s interesting to speculate how it would have panned out for everyone but for the crash. “We were all getting into this Graham Hill Racing thing and it was starting to take off. I think he’d probably have taken the team on a similar trajectory to that we saw later with Williams.”