by Unknown
GRAHAM HILL
1958 - 1974
In common with Tazio Nuvolari, Graham Hill’s reputation as a Ringmeister rests principally on one magnificent victory. Graham’s achievement was not that he overcame a number of more powerful cars than his to win the German Grand Prix, as Tazio had done, but that he held off two of his greatest rivals for almost 14 laps of the Nurburgring, when the slightest mistake could have lost him the race. Graham’s career began with an advert in a magazine, offering four laps of Brands Hatch in a 500cc Cooper-JAP for the princely sum of £1. That was a good chunk of his weekly wage at the time, but the investment changed his life - those four laps sold him on the idea of being a racing driver. Soon afterwards Graham went on the dole so he could work full-time and for nothing preparing two cars at a new racing drivers’ school at Brands, teaching the hopefuls how to race! To gain experience for this he had a couple of races himself in the Cooper on Easter Monday, 1954, only to part company with the school in the summer. He went to Brands for the August Bank Holiday meeting, where he met Colin Chapman, Guv’nor of the fledgling Lotus Cars. Graham cadged a lift back to London with him at the end of the day, Colin showed him the Lotus works and invited him to come round and make himself useful any time he liked. A year later he was working there full-time. This was important as he was now a married man, having wed Bette Schubrook, whom he had met four years earlier at the London Rowing Club, Bette having represented Great Britain in the European Games. His racing career began in earnest in 1956 (when he was 27 years old) mainly with a Lotus Eleven owned by Jack Richards. He had a number of races in this car, winning a couple, and was once disqualified at Brands for spinning at the same corner four laps in a row. The next year he drove another Lotus Eleven for Doc Manton, a DB3S Aston for Tommy Atkins, a Tojeiro-Jaguar for John Ogier and an F2 Cooper-Climax fo John Willment. Colin Chapman was impressed enough to give Graham an F2 Lotus for a couple of races at the end of the year, then invited him to drive for him in Fl, F2 and sportscars in 1958. Four years after his four laps at Brands, Graham Hill was a works racing driver. He made his Grand Prix debut at Monaco, a circuit he would virtually own in years to come, but not this year. He managed to put his F2 Lotus 16 on the back row of the 16-car grid, equal slowest with Jo Bonnier and his Maserati 250F. ‘When the race started I was last,’ wrote Graham in his autobiograhy, Life at the Limit, ‘but by the seventy-fifth lap I found myself in fourth place, and I hadn’t overtaken a soul. A piece of cake, I thought; my first Grand Prix, and running fourth already. Then my back wheel fell off.’ Sadly, this was a not uncommon occurence with Lotuses, for Colin Chapman was the leader of the ‘add lightness’ brigade. Graham retired in the Dutch, Belgian, French and British GPs before making his first visit to the Nurburgring for the German GP. Unfortunately, he makes no comment about the circuit anywhere in his autobiography and of this race he says only, ‘I had to start from the back of the grid and this time an oil line split and the engine oil came out, not onto me but on to the exhaust pipe, creating a thick cloud of white smoke. I couldn’t see a thing and I tried desperately to remember which way the road went as I slowed down to a stop just on the edge of a steep drop.’ Understandably, perhaps, Graham omits to mention that in practice he spun the F2 Lotus into a bank when the water pump drive sheared and the engine tightened up. He then went out in team-mate Cliff Allison’s Fl car and spun that into a bank, too, giving the Lotus mechanics plenty of work before the race. As a result, Graham started from the back row of the grid again, with the official time of 18 mins 56 secs, which must be a record of some kind. After two fruitless and frustrating years with Team Lotus, Graham joined BRM for 1960. He was also invited to drive for Porsche in sportscar races and returned to the Ring to drive an RS60 with Edgar Barth in the 1000 Kms, an event that gets no mention in Life at the Limit. The Porsche team comprised two 1.7-litre cars for Jo Bonnier / Olivier Gendebien and Hans Herrmann/Maurice Trintignant and a 1.6-litre for Edgar Barth and Hill. Barth knew the Ring well, having raced there since 1954, so he took the first stint, leading the up to l,600cc class easily. Graham kept that lead, but then on lap 28 Barth went off the road after falling foul of another car and their race was over. As the 1960 German GP was for F2 cars on the Sudscbleife, Graham’s next visit to the Ring was for the 1961 1000 Kms, when he again drove for Porsche, this time with Stirling Moss, who had won the race for the previous three years. They drove an RS61, as did Jo Bonnier/Dan Gurney and Hans Herrmann/ Edgar Barth. They were up against the formidable Ferrari team, which comprised two 246 Dinos for Phil Hill/Taffy von Trips and Richie Ginther/ Olivier Gendebien and a 3-litre Testa Rossa entered by the North American Racing Team for Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez. Then there was a Birdcage Maserati 61, entered by Camoradi for Lucky Casner / Masten Gregory. Moss, naturally, did the opening stint, but could do nothing about the meteoric Phil Hill, who proceeded to shatter Stirling’s 1959 lap record of 9 mins 32.0 secs time after time. He did this to such effect that when he handed the Ferrari to von Trips after ten laps, Taffy went back into the race still 38 seconds ahead of the second man, Moss, who stopped two laps later. By the time Graham rejoined the race he was back in fifth spot. The weather now played into the hands of the Porsche team, for it began to snow! The Ferraris suffered badly from this, as freezing water poured down their air intakes and into the carburetters, slowing them drastically (See Ringmeister 8, Phil Hill). The Porsches were on Dunlop SP tyres, which suited the conditions admirably and first Graham and then Stirling took full advantage of the situation to claw their way back up the field. After 20 laps Moss took second place from the ailing Ginther/Gendebien Ferrari, only for the Porsche’s engine to blow on lap 22. He and Hill then took over the disc-braked Carrera of Herbert Linge/Sepp Greger and drove that to victory in the up to 2-litre sportscar class, finishing eighth overall. Stirling had better luck in the Grand Prix, beating the Ferraris of Phil Hill and Taffy von Trips with Rob Walker’s Lotus in what was to be the last of his legendary drives. For Graham, however, the race was over almost before it was begun. After outqualifying his BRM team-mate Tony Brooks (a two-time winner at the Ring) he had a contretemps with the Porsches of Dan Gurney and Hans Herrmann at the South Turn on the second lap. As he explained in Life at the Limit, ‘I tried to take Hans Herrmann on the inside and he closed the door on me and I had to brake hard. The car got slightly out of control, slid across the track and bumped into Dan Gurney, who was trying to get by me on the other side... As I hit Gurney the force of the impact on the front wheel broke the steering on my car and I went out of control, flew straight over a bank and right over the top of a cameraman’s camera bag. Fortunately, I landed the right way up but it was rather a nasty old moment and, of course, it put the car out of the race. I had a lonely walk back to expain why, in fact, I was walking instead of driving, which was a bit embarrassing.’ It is odd that Graham should recall this ignominious event in his memoirs, and then omit his third place in the 1962 1000 Kms with Porsche altogether. He was paired with Hans Herrmann in a flat-eight RS62 spyder, while Jo Bonnier and Dan Gurney were given the closed car that had run in the Targa Florio. They were up against the V6 Ferraris of Phil Hill / Olivier Gendebien and Giancarlo Baghetti / Lorenzo Bandini and the V8 of Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez. However, they were all left for dead by the little Lotus 23 of Jim Clark, which ran away with the race in the opening laps (See Ringmeister 11, Jim Clark). Just before the start it began to rain, and the Porsche mechanics fitted the Hill / Herrmann car with Dunlop SP rain tyres moments before the flag fell. But the rain did not last and Graham, taking the first stint, suffered as a result. He managed to hold fourth place throughout, but could not keep pace with Dan Gurney in the other Porsche. The car was fitted with dry tyres when Herrmann took over, only for the rain to fall again. Jim Clark crashed the Lotus when overcome by exhaust fumes and the Ferraris of Willy Mairesse/Mike Parkes (4-litre GTO) and Hill and Gendebien (2.4-litre Dino) took charge of the race. Phil Hill took the lead soon after and he and Gendebien drove on to vi
ctory. The Porsches were third and fourth, until Bonnier’s gearbox failed on the penultimate lap. The Hill/ Herrmann car was thus elevated to third place overall and won its class, with Graham making fastest lap in 9 mins 36.8 sees. That was Graham’s fifth visit to the Nurburgring and he had learned it well. Just how well he was to show in the German Grand Prix, which was undoubtedly the finest drive of his career, a career that was very nearly cut short during practice. After faffing around with four-cylinder engines in 1961, when they had let Scuderia Ferrari steal a march on them in the opening season of the new, 1.5-litre Formule One, the British teams had got their acts together for ‘62. Coventry-Climax had produced a V8 which now powered Lotus, Cooper, Brabham and Bowmaker Lola, while BRM had built their own V8 and Porsche a Flat 8. The two BRMs of Graham Hill and Richie Ginther were up against the Lotuses of Jim Clark and Trevor Taylor, the Porsches of Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier, the Ferraris of Phil Hill, Giancarlo Baghetti, Ricardo Rodriguez and Lorenzo Bandini, the Coopers of Bruce McLaren and Tony Maggs, Jack Brabham’s lone Brabham and the Bowmaker Lolas of John Surtees and Roy Salvadori. During the first practice on the Friday morning nobody got close to Phil Hill’s 1961 lap record of 8 mins 57.8 secs, but his namesake was fastest in the session with 9’ 01.8”. Porsche were naturally taking their home Grand Prix very seriously and had spent several days at the Ring before the recent British GP, doing three full-length practice sessions, during which Dan Gurney was reported to have lapped in 8 mins 43.0 secs. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that in the afternoon Gurney beat Hill’s record by more than 10 seconds, recording 8’ 47.2”. Graham was next up, with 8’ 50.2”, and Jim Clark and John Surtees were also under nine minutes. Hill was driving a brand new BRM that had only been used in practice for the British GP at Aintree. However, just as he was getting into his stride there occurred an extraordinary incident which could have had fatal consequences. Carel de Beaufort was allowed to do a lap in official practice with a German TV company’s 16 mm movie camera fixed to his Porsche. The camera fell off and Graham was the first on the scene. ‘I was rushing down the “Foxhole”, which is a very steep, twisty descent about a third of the way round the circuit.’ he recalled in Life at the Limit. ‘I appeared round a hedge doing something like 120130 mph when I saw a rather large black object in the middle of the road. Now, I was unable to move across the road to avoid it at this stage because of the speed I was travelling and I was having to cut the corners on this sort of zig¬zag downhill road, I could only move about six inches off-line, so that my wheels didn’t hit it - I didn’t know what it was as I ran straight over the top of it, and unfortunately it pierced the oil tank which was just behind the radiator. ‘The oil dropped onto the road and got onto my back wheels. I spun round and went into a ditch on the left of the road, going forwards again, and went down this ditch rather like a giant mole at great speed - tearing off wheels and suspension bits - and eventually I came to a stop halfway up the other side, looking very denuded, lying in the ditch, more or less just a chassis. Luckily I was still in it, albeit a bit breathless. I remember thinking: Thank God it didn’t turn over. I got out of the car -I was a bit winded - and had just climbed to the top of the ditch; as I was peeping over the top with my eyes level with the track I was just in time to see Tony Maggs rushing down the “Foxhole”, hitting my oil, spinning round like a top and bouncing end to end off the hedge - eventually destroying his car but without injuring himself. I then ran down the track waving my arms just in time to save Maurice Trintignant from doing the same thing.’ In Motor Sport, Denis Jenkinson was incensed by this foolishness, ‘For the sake of getting a few feet of bad film, two drivers’ lives had been risked and two cars demolished, but the all-powerful Television racket seems able to get away with such things. When everyone got back to the pits and the various stories were pieced together there was a right old shin-dig and practice ended in a bit of a shambles one way and another.’ Maggs was now relegated to Cooper’s spare four-cylinder car, but Graham was luckier in that he was able to use the V8 he had raced at Aintree two weeks before. On Saturday it rained, so there was no improvement in times and Gurney remained on pole, with Hill, Clark and Surtees alongside him on the front row. ‘When practice was over,’ noted Denis Jenkinson, ‘the sun came out and the track dried up, and after lunch Hermann Lang did a lap of the circuit in a 1939 Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix car, with 3-litre engine with two-stage supercharging, running on nitro-benzine fuel mixture, making fine noises and smells. At the end of the lap it went by the grandstands and pits at a speed which made a lot of people jump backwards and say “Oh!”. Naturally, such a car has nothing in the way of brakes, tyres or road-holding compared with modern Grand Prix cars, but it certainly had an engine, and that V12-cylinder power unit in a chassis designed by Colin Chapman would make quite a good racing car.’ Clearly, Jenks had little time for the puny 1.5-litre Formula, but it was to provide an unforgettable German GP which would make Graham Hill a Ringmeister. The police estimated that more than 350,000 people crowded around the Nurburgring, in the hope of seeing a Porsche victory. The race was supposed to start at 2 pm but, as Philip Turner noted in The Motor, ‘As the cars assembled after lunch in front of their pits, the rain was still falling and the tower of the Schloss Nürburg up on its hill drifted in and out of the mist... Then suddenly the heavens opened and a solid wall of water fell from the skies, drenching anyone out in the open to the skin. A river flowed past the pits and the start was postponed, first for 15 minutes, then for half an hour to allow the flood water on the track to subside. Then, with the rain still falling, the drivers set out on a lap of reconnaisance before returning to the pits for fuel tanks to be topped up and the cars at last to assemble on the grid. Four minutes to go and at the command of the commentator the enormous crowd rose to its feet and stood in silence in memory of von Trips, who this time last year seemed destined to win the World Championship for Germany.’ It was still raining when the race began. Jim Clark forgot to switch on his fuel pumps and kissed goodbye to his chances of victory (See Ringmeister 11, Jim Clark), but Phil Hill made a demon start from row four. The man who had stunned everyone with the first sub-nine minute lap the year before could only manage 9 mins 24.7 secs in the 1962 Ferrari, but he got away superbly and was rather incongruously given as race leader at Breidscheid by the illuminated Dunlop scoreboard. This was quickly corrected, but Phil was in third place, behind Gurney and Graham Hill. Gurney’s standing lap was completed in a tardy 10 mins 42.9 secs, due to the heavy rain. During lap two Graham Hill closed right up on him and John Surtees (Lola) and Jo Bonnier (Porsche) both overtook Phil Hill. Gurney completed that lap in 10’ 22.5” but Graham was harrying him with 10’ 21.8” and early on lap three he moved into the lead, never to lose it. He also lapped in 10’ 12.2”, which was to remain the fastest of the race, giving a good idea of just how bad the conditions were. As all the cars were on Dunlop D12 wetweather tyres, Graham had removed both front and rear anti-roll bars from his BRM, in the hope of gaining some advantage in the appalling conditions. Considering that he was suffering from heavy bruising and had strained muscles in his neck, chest and arms in his practice shunt he was driving a sensational race, which was not made easier when his fire extinguisher was jolted out of its clip and began rolling around on the floor of the cockpit. ‘Graham Hill now began tentatively to increase his lead,’ wrote Peter Gamier in Autocar, ‘there was no question of anything very forceful, as the circuit was far too treacherous. It must have been a heart-in-mouth business for those who were fighting for the lead, for still very little indeed separated the foremost cars. By the end of lap 4 he led Gurney by 2.5 secs, Gurney now being only 2 secs ahead of Surtees.’ That changed during lap five, when the battery on Gurney’s Porsche came loose. He reached down to fix it, ran wide on a corner and Surtees was through in a flash. After seven of the 15 laps Graham was just 4.2 sees ahead of Surtees, with Gurney almost seven seconds further back. Three laps later and Dan had reduced that gap to one second and there were fewer than
three seconds separating the three leaders. But Hill was a match for the others, completing lap 12 in 10’ 30.7” and lap 14 in 10’ 23.5”. As he said to John Surtees afterwards, “It was sickening. Every time I looked in the mirror there was that red nose of your motorcar. Why didn’t you slow up or something?” Surtees might well have said the same to Gurney, for they took the chequered flag with just 2.5 seconds between the BRM and the Lola and less than two seconds between the Lola and the Porsche - after two-anda-half hours on the Nurburgring in the pouring rain. All three men had driven outstandingly well, but there could only be one winner and that was Graham Hill, Ringmeister. That was Graham’s second Grande Epreuve win of the year (he had already won the Dutch) and he would go on to win the Italian and South African GPs to secure the Drivers’ World Championship for himself and the Constructors’ Championship for BRM. In 1963 Graham scored the first of his five wins in the Monaco Grand Prix, the pin-point precision of his driving that had served him so well in the Eifel mountains being just as vital on the streets of the Principality. His next two visits to the Nurburgring were unsuccessful, however. He did not take part in the 1963 1000 Kms, but was back for the GP with BRM, the team entering three cars for Graham, Richie Ginther and Scuderia Centro-Sud, whose driver was Lorenzo Bandini. The Italian embarrassed the other two by being third fastest in practice, almost three seconds faster than Hill and almost seven faster than Ginther. Graham’s race lasted just two laps before a broken quill shaft in the gearbox brought him to a halt in the South Turn. The next year Hill drove a Ferrari with Innes Ireland in the 1000 Kms. Just as Scuderia CentroSud had backed up the BRM team in the previous Grand Prix, so Colonel Ronnie Hoare’s Maranello Concessionaires backed up Scuderia Ferrari with a 3.3-litre 275P, run alongside the works cars of John Surtees/ Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scarfiotti/Nino Vaccarella. On the second lap Graham moved into second place behind John Surtees and took the lead when Bandini replaced John on lap 14. This lasted for one lap until Innes took over the Maranello Ferrari and then he began to harry the works cars as Hill had done. This did not go down well with Ferrari Team manager Eugenio Dragoni, who suggested to Ronnie Hoare that as the Ferraris were running 1,2,3 he should tell Ireland to ease off. The Colonel was having none of this and told Dragoni to slow his cars instead! The problem was resolved in the Scuderia’s favour when Ireland failed to complete his 29th lap. At least, he completed it, but the Ferrari did not, having run out of fuel on the main straight. By the time Innes had run back to the pits to explain the situation he was absolutely knackered, so Graham picked up a five-gallon drum of fuel and set off back down the road. ‘If you’ve ever tried to run carrying a fivegallon drum of fuel you will know that it’s pretty difficult,’ he wrote in Life at the Limit. ‘But with 50,000 people in the stands watching you you’ve got to make a bit of an effort; I didn’t like to slow down too much, though I felt like it, and it wasn’t until I had disappeared from view over the hill that I slowed to a walk - my lungs were bursting and I was absolutely whacked.’ It was a wasted effort. Although he got the car back into the race he was soon black-flagged, the regulations stipulating that refuelling only be done in the pits. In fact, the Ferrari had suffered a split fuel tank, so they would not have completed the race anyway, but it was tough on Ronnie Hoare’s private team, which had given the works Ferraris a severe fright. In the Grand Prix Hill was partnered once more by Richie Ginther and both BRMs suffered blown engines during practice. Graham could only manage fourth place on the grid, 5.4 secs behind pole-sitter John Surtees in the Ferrari. Dan Gurney (Brabham) gave Surtees a very hard time for the first half of the race and Graham was locked in combat for third position with Jim Clark, until the Lotus expired at the end of the seventh lap. Gurney then hit trouble due to overheating and Hill overtook him on lap 10. So it was Il Grande John who won the GP (for the second year running), Graham struggling home in second place with a badly misfiring V8. The BRM had never looked like winning and Graham had to be grateful for the misfortunes of others. He drove for Col. Ronnie Hoare again in the 1965 1000 Kms and was given a first taste of the phenomenom that was his new BRM team-mate, Jackie Stewart, who was to be his co-driver in the Maranello Concessionaires Ferrari. In practice John Surtees took pole in the works, 4-litre Ferrari P2 with 8 mins 53.1 secs and Stewart, whose first visit to the Ring this was, put the 3.3-litre P2 next door to it for the Le Mans start with a remarkable 8’ 58.8” in just four practice laps. Graham took the first stint and held second place behind Surtees, until overtaken by his namesake, Phil, in the new Ford GT40. When that dropped out, Graham duelled for second place with Mike Parkes in the works 3.3-litre P2, until the electrics failed on lap 10 and the car came to a halt at Schwalbenschwanz, leaving Jackie Stewart without a drive. Jackie gave Graham (and everyone else) another severe fright during practice for the German GP, when he was second only to Jim Clark, beating Graham by 0.7 sees, only to damage the BRM’s suspension on the second lap of the race. Hill, however, drove superbly, holding second place throughout, but he could do nothing about Clark, who won his sixth Grand Epreuve in a row to clinch the World Championship with his first victory at the Ring. The year 1966 got off to a great start for Graham, who went ‘down under’ with BRM and won both the New Zealand and Australian GPs. Back in Europe he could only finish third at Monaco for a change, having won the previous three races, the first hat-trick in the history of the event. The following weekend he became the first Englishman and only the second rookie to win the Indianapolis 500, driving John Mecom’s Lola-Ford to a superb victory. Coupled with his 1962 World Championship, the win at Indy meant that he had now achieved Parts 1 and 2 of what was to become his Triple Crown, although he would have to wait until 1972 for his Le Mans victory. Grand Prix racing became Grand again in 1966 with the advent of the new, 3-litre Formula. Unfortunately, there were still not many 3-litre engines about by the time of the German GP and BRM and Lotus were using 2-litre versions of their 1.5-litre units. This did not prevent Jim Clark from gaining pole position with a shattering 8 mins 16.5 secs, but the best Graham could do with the BRM was 8’ 26.6”, which was only 10th fastest. The race provided a fine victory for Jack Brabham (3-litre Repco-Brabham) who beat John Surtees (3-litre Cooper-Maserati) to the flag by more than 40 seconds. Graham was fourth, more than six and a half minutes in arrears. Towards the end of the year Graham was approached by Henry Taylor, Competitions Manager of Ford, who asked if he might be intereested in going back to Lotus for 1967. Ford had financed the new V8 Cosworth engine which, initially, was to be for Team Lotus only and they wished to safeguard their investment - a whopping £10,000 - by having a second top-flight driver to back up Jim Clark. At the time, Graham had given no thought to leaving BRM, but he had been there for seven years and, by his own admission, was now regarded as part of the scenery. ‘People were far too used to me and I was becoming less effective,’ he explained in Life at the Limit, ‘they were becoming immune to my constant proddings.’ After a great deal of thought he decided to return to Lotus, where he was given equal Number One status with Clark. Although he did not win a single race in 1967 he enjoyed his new surroundings. He and Clark got on famously and formed a very strong partnership. Jim managed to win four Grandes Epreuves, yet the World Championship that year was won on points by Denny Hulme, with just two wins to his name. The second of those was the German GP, in which both Hill and Clark failed to finish. Graham almost failed to start, following a big accident during practice on the downhill run to Adenau Bridge. ‘I was having some trouble with the brakes,’ he recalled, ‘they didn’t feel quite right. I got to a point where I just didn’t slow down enough -I went up one of the banks and did a great big wall of death act. ‘Stewart, who was following me, said he saw me come right out of my seat - we weren’t wearing seat belts in those days. The car came back down on the road again going backwards and I was able to step out of it a trifle breathless.’ The Lotus 49 was badly damaged, so the mechanics had to prepare the spare car for the race. And as Graham hadn’t complet
ed the requisite five qualifying laps, he had to borrow Jimmy’s machine and do a gentle lap in that, while Jimmy chewed his nails with even more vigour than usual. As a result of all this Graham was on row four of the grid, whereas Jimmy was in pole position. Within seconds of the start, Graham was spinning in the South Turn, having been nudged by someone, and had to set off in pursuit of the entire field. A few laps later he noticed that one of his front wheels was about to fall off. He made it back to the pits where the wheel nut was tightened, but not long afterwards the rear suspension broke and that was that. The following year Jim Clark was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim, leaving the motor racing world stunned and mystified, as it had been following Stirling Moss’s career-ending crash at Goodwood in 1962. Team Lotus soldiered on in a daze, Colin Chapman being simply devastated by the death of the driver who had become his closest friend. It was up to Graham to pull the team together, which he did to remarkable effect, winning the Spanish and Monaco GPs in the space of two weeks. Throughout the whole weekend of the German GP the weather was atrocious. Graham qualified his Lotus in fourth place, 42 seconds slower than pole-sitter Jacky Ickx (V12 Ferrari), but almost eight seconds quicker than his old BRM teammate, Jackie Stewart, now in Ken Tyrrell’s MatraFord. However, Ickx and his Ferrari team-mate Chris Amon made poor starts and both Jackie and Graham made very good ones, and it was the Matra that went into the lead when the race began in a foggy downpour. The rest of the field never saw which way Stewart went. The Matra was on super-sticky Dunlops and they combined with Jackie’s extraordinary skills to defy the appalling conditions and let Ken Tyrrell’s machine run away with the race from the drop of the flag. At the end of the opening lap Stewart led Hill by just eight seconds, and Graham had Chris Amon right behind him. The brilliant young New Zealander was not known for his fondness of the rain, but on this occasion he put his worries behind him and drove his Ferrari superbly in the blinding spray thrown up by the wheels of the Lotus. At half-distance (seven laps) Stewart was an astounding 90 seconds ahead of the battling duo and Hill was a bare two seconds ahead of Amon. As they passed the pits to complete lap 11 the Ferrari was almost alongside the Lotus and it seemed as though Amon must take second place. However, as Patrick McNally reported in Autosport, ‘Something was apparently amiss with the limited-slip diff, and going into the second part of the North Turn the Ferrari spun wildly on the slippery surface, finishing up on the grass bank completely undamaged but stuck firm in the mud.’ A dispirited Amon received a huge ovation as he trudged back to the pits. The pressure was now off Graham Hill, but due to the flying spray he was unaware that Amon was no longer with him and was pressing on as hard as ever. It was almost his undoing, for he spun in the Esses after Hohe Acht, as he recalled in Life at the Limit: ‘On lap 12 it started to rain really hard and I came sailing over the top of a hill blind and plunged down into a little stream running across the road. I simply did not see it - it hadn’t been there last time round. I hit it with a wallop and the car spun round like a top. Suddenly, there I was slap in the middle of the road: Oh Lord, I thought, where’s Amon? I was trying to keep an eye out for him and also to get the car out of the way. It wouldn’t start on the starter and I had to get out and push it, thinking that Amon was going to hit me at any moment.’ These two contretemps allowed Jochen Rindt in the Brabham to move into third place, now just a few seconds behind Graham. Hill managed to hold him off for the remaining two laps and finished second in the German GP for the third time. He finished second again in the USGP at Watkins Glen and then won the final round in Mexico City, to become World Champion for the second time with 48 points to the 36 of Jackie Stewart. He was back at the Ring in May, 1969, for the F2 Eifel GP on the Nordschleife and put his Lotus 59 on the front row, beside Stewart (Matra) and pole-sitter Jo Siffert (BMW). Jackie ran away with the race and Graham held second place for a while, but then both he and his new Lotus team-mate, Jochen Rindt, were forced out with broken front wishbones. No fewer than nine drivers got under eight minutes during practice for the Grand Prix and Graham was the ninth, nine seconds slower than Rindt, who was almost six seconds slower than poleman Jacky Ickx in the works Brabham. Jackie Stewart (Matra) got the jump on Ickx at the start and held the Brabham at bay for six laps. Jacky’s persistence finally paid off, however, and he passed Stewart and to score a magnificent victory. Graham was down in sixth place initially, moving up to fifth behind his team-mate Rindt, on lap six. He was relegated to sixth again by Bruce McLaren (McLaren) a lap later and was down to seventh on lap 10. Happily for him, McLaren, Hulme (McLaren), Beltoise (Matra) and Siffert (Lotus) all retired in the closing laps and Graham, his Lotus now lacking fourth gear, found himself in fourth place at the end. At the end of the year he had a huge accident during the USGP at Watkins Glen, damaging his legs severely. He was in hospital for some time and many people hoped that he would take the opportunity to retire from the sport he had graced so well for so long. He was now 40 years old, the age at which Juan Manuel Fangio had begun his Fl career, but for all his success at the wheel Hill was no Fangio and so it was unfortunate, to say the least, that he, in common with far too many sports stars, refused to accept that time had caught up with him. Colin Chapman now had the very fast Jochen Rindt on his books and wanted to be rid of Graham without hurting his feelings, so he suggested that Rob Walker take him on to drive his Lotus 72 in 1970. Walker already had Jo Siffert as his driver, but when he left to join March, Graham replaced him. Hill made a remarkable comeback, but his season with Walker was not a success and they parted company at its end. He now went to Brabham, which had been taken over by designer Ron Tauranac following Jack Brabham’s retirement. After a year’s hiatus while the Nurburgring was redeveloped, the German GP returned to the Nordschleife in 1971. Graham was 13th on the grid, almost 6.5 seconds slower than his new team-mate, Tim Schenken. In the race Schenken finished sixth and Hill ninth, more than six-anda-half minutes behind the winner, Jackie Stewart. Sadly, he still refused to accept that he was over the hill and re-signed with Brabham (now owned by Bernie Ecclestone) for 1972. That year he was invited to drive a works V12 Matra at Le Mans and he and Henri Pescarolo won the race, completing his Triple Crown. In the German GP Graham could only manage 15th place on the two-by-two grid, with his new Brabham team-mate, Carlos Reutemann, in sixth spot. The race was another runaway win for Jacky Ickx, this time in a Ferrari. At half-distance (seven laps) Graham was way down in 16th place and the sad truth was that the Ringmeister of 1962 was barely making an entry in the race reports a decade later. Thanks to several retirements and pit stops he eventually finished sixth, just ahead of his other team-mate, Wilson Fittipaldi. Despite the fact that he was making his debut at the Ring in a Brabham that was badly undergeared, Fittipaldi had shadowed Graham for almost the entire race. Hill left Brabham at the end of the year and still refused to retire. As no one else would employ him for 1973 he found backing from Embassy cigarettes and set up his own team, buying two Shadow F1 cars, designed by Tony Southgate. He finished 13th in the German GP that year and ninth the next, by which time the Shadows had been replaced with Lolas. Graham’s remarkable career finally ground to an ignominious halt at Monaco in 1975, where he failed to qualify for the race he had won five times. At last he got the message and retired to run his team with the very promising newcomer, Tony Brise, at the wheel. That ended in tragedy on November 29 after a test session at the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France. The Piper Aztec which Graham was flying home crashed in thick fog on the approach to Elstree Airfield. Graham, Tony Brise and four other members of the team were killed instantly. Graham Hill is rightly remembered as a double World Champion, five times winner of the Monaco Grand Prix and holder of a unique Triple Crown: winner of the World Championship, the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Indianapolis 500. But he sold himself short here by ignoring his victory at the Nurburgring, a circuit that surely makes more demands of a driver than Le Mans and Indianapolis together. How he, and others, could have ignored the race that made him a Ringmeister i
s a mystery. His triple was, in fact, a quartet and it is surprising that the man who had such a great sense of humour should not have borrowed the title of those other icons of the Swinging Sixties, John, Paul, George and Ringo and proclaimed himelf holder of the Fab Four, the fourth being the German Grand Prix of 1962. Any victory on the Nordschleife was pretty special, but having two drivers of the calibre of John Surtees and Dan Gurney snapping at his heels for two hours and forty minutes in the pouring rain without making a mistake was an extraordinary achievement, and unquestionably the greatest drive of Graham Hill’s career.
