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Ex world champion Damon Hill retired from Formula 1 racing in
1999. So what does a man who has achieved his life goal before the
age of 40 do? Enjoy more time with his family, of course, as he
tells Tessa Harris.
Damon Hill is looking tanned and relaxed as he sits behind the desk
of his Surrey office. It’s been a while since he dropped out of the
media spotlight, but those familiar dark brows are still there and
those eyes are still piercing and earnest. Dressed in jeans and
sporting a close-cropped beard, he’s just spent the half term break
in France, near La Rochelle, with his family. “We went there for the
waves,” he explains. He is an avid surfer and whenever the
opportunity arises he heads for the coast. “I just love it,” he
enthuses.
It’s this easy, modest, self-effacing attitude that endeared Damon
to the media when he was a Formula One driver – he won the BBC’s
Sports Personality of the Year Award in 1994 - only now he seems
even more content with his life away from the Grand Prix circuit.
It’s been six years since he hung up the famous deep-blue “Hill”
helmet for the last time. (Both Damon and his father, the legendary
Graham, sported the insignia of the London Rowing Club, of which the
latter was once a member.) But he has no regrets about turning his
back on F1. “Absolutely none,” he says emphatically.
Not surprisingly, Damon’s post-F1 life still involves prestige and
performance cars, but of a very different kind. Shortly after he
retired he and his business partner, Michael Breen, set up an
exclusive club that allows its members to drive the world’s most
exciting and exotic cars without having to buy them or worry about
the running costs. Damon has a 50 per cent stake in the
Leatherhead-based company, called P1, and is actively involved in
its running, sometimes even tutoring members on special event race
days.
Two Bentley Continental GTs and an Arnage are included in the
50-strong fleet and Damon has nothing but praise for the cars’ sleek
lines, luxury feel and flawless performance. “They’re sumptuous.
It’s a treat to drive one. The world seems to be a different place
when you’re driving in a Bentley,” he smiles.
P1 offers over £4 million worth of top quality cars to up to just
250 members who exchange points for driving time in the cars of
their choice, ranging from the latest Ferrari F430 and a Ford GT –
one of only 28 in this country – to an AC Cobra. But while members
can enjoy the drive, the club takes care of the anxieties of
ownership like depreciation and maintenance.
Suggest that he has a love of cars, however, and Damon clearly
bridles at the thought. “I’ve never loved cars,” he says
forthrightly. “That’s not my motivation. The motivation for me is
the competition. To say I’m a car lover conjures up an impression of
someone who covets the car. F1 cars were beautiful things, and the
quality of the cars is superb, but no. I am an experience lover, I
would say. I like to have the experience of driving cars. I don’t
think I’m alone in that I like to experience as many different
styles of car as I can. That’s what appeals about P1. It’s just a
different approach.”
If competition motivated Damon in Formula One, he had clearly lost
his appetite for it in early 1999. “I was 40 years old and you know
when you’re past your best,” he says candidly. “To be a racing
driver the passion has to come from within yourself. You get an
opportunity to prove yourself through your results and as you get
higher up you ask yourself if you have satisfied that desire within.
I had. I answered that question.”
Although that passion for motor racing began early in Damon’s life –
he was famously given his first motorbike for passing his 11 plus –
he was 33 before he found himself on the starting grid in a Grand
Prix. Yet it had been his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his
illustrious father, twice World Champion Graham Hill who was
tragically killed in a plane crash when Damon was just 15, from a
very early age.
After a protracted apprenticeship, first in F3, then 3000, he first
raced for Brabham in 1992. But his big break came when he replaced
Nigel Mansell at Williams, where he had been a test driver.
“It was a long haul,” he reflects. “I had the name but I didn’t have
my dad, but I knew I would get nowhere thinking along the lines that
if I’d had my dad it would’ve been different. The example I learned
from him was determination. He didn’t have the money either at
first, but he showed that it could be done. We all find inspiration
from different sources and he was mine.”
Winning his first Grand Prix in Hungary in 1993 he went on to finish
as runner-up to Michael Schumacher in the Drivers’ Championship in
both ’94, when a collision in the Australian Grand Prix handed his
great rival the title – many believed unfairly, and ’95. The
following year he won the 1996 Formula 1 World Drivers’
Championship, leading the competition from start to finish, winning
eight races and finishing 19 points ahead of his nearest rival.
When asked what it meant to him winning the World Championship,
however, he describes it simply as “a relief.” The pressure on him
was obviously enormous. “It was satisfying but I was blinkered, like
a race horse,” he reflects. “I had crossed over a barrier and joined
a select band of drivers.”
Despite the fact that he was World Champion, Williams,
controversially and much to everyone’s surprise, did not renew his
contract and Damon moved to TWR Arrows. In 1998 he moved once more,
this time to the Jordan team, before announcing his retirement from
Formula One in June 1999.
When asked if he was happy to walk away from the motor racing world
he answers without hesitation, “Yes,” and it is very clear that the
seductive powers of F1 no longer hold any sway with him. So has the
sport lost something of its edge and excitement? “I get asked that
all the time,” he replies frankly. “Why would I be asked that
question if it wasn’t a fact? In the old days of F1 those skills and
bravery were displayed much more clearly. The emphasis has shifted
from being all about driving and skill to being about the power of
ownership and political dominance.”
Naturally he has been asked to commentate on various Grand Prix
around the world for television stations, but these he has declined.
“They would take me away from home for too long,” he says.
He has also been approached to take part in the Grand Prix Masters
World Series, something to which Nigel Mansell and his old team mate
Alain Prost have signed up, but he turned that down too. “It’s a
very appealing idea to recapture all the excitement but it is going
back and it will never be as it was,” he says.
He has not severed his ties with the motor racing world completely
however. He manages a young Northern Ireland hopeful named Steven
Kane who is currently impressing punters in the GP2 series and he
hopes to nurture him all the way to Formula One.
But as for getting back on the track Damon is adamant. “Self
preservation seems to have kicked in a big way,” he confesses. “A
sport like motor racing is dangerous.” His need for speed, which he
admits was almost an addiction when he was racing in F1, is still
there. “I like motion sports. I don’t like things where a ball comes
at me, like football, but if I’m moving I can do it.”
Apart from his own self-preservation instinct, Damon is obviously
thinking more and more about his family. He and his wife Georgie
have four children, the eldest of whom, 16 year-old Oliver, has
Down’s Syndrome. Damon is a very active president of the Down’s
Syndrome Association and lends his high profile to fund raising
campaigns whenever he can. “It’s my children’s happiness that is
most important now. The big thing in my life is my family. I try and
give as much time as I can to them.”
So what next for the former World Champion who, during his career,
commanded such affection, not just among F1 fans, but also among the
public at large? Damon shakes his head. “I don’t have any huge
ambitions,” he says. “ I want this company to succeed, but I spent
such a long time having this goal of winning the World Championship
in the distance when I was racing, just paddling away trying to get
to that goal, that I want to live in the present. It’s very easy to
forget you are here, now.”
This is a man clearly at ease with his new life and, as our
conversation draws to a close, we turn our attention to surfing.
It’s the first time he has allowed himself to break into a real
smile as he talks about his love for the sport. It turns out that he
would really like to catch the waves in Hawaii. He pauses. “I’ve
never been there,” he says, and then adds with a wink, “Perhaps I do
have an ambition left after all.”
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