Ferrari Mailing List: Fwd: Tom Clarkson: Phil Hill Remembers Monza

[red5hilser (red5hilser]

To All: When I was a kid, Phil Hill was my idol. I was fortunate enough to see 
him race on the West Coast many times and used to hang around his pit area, 
especially at Riverside, hoping that some of his magic would rub off on me. 
What a shame that we ALL have to grow old and feeble. Those were the golden 
years of the great American Grand Prix drivers: Masten Gregory, Richie Ginther, 
Carroll Shelby, Dan Gurney, and my favorite, PHIL HILL.
 
Yer pal Ferrari Bubba


Phil Hill, Ferrariâs 1961 world champion, hunches over a lightweight shooting 
stick as he shuffles through the Monza paddock at the 2006 Italian Grand Prix. 
One laborious step at a time. Itâs a poignant moment, surrounded as he is by 
supple Italian youth and memories of those far-off days of F1 ascendancy when 
he took the title at this very circuit. How different things look now. Phil is 
a frail old man. At 79, his voice rises to little more than a whisper and he 
says it hurts to walk too far. Naturally introverted, he has become 
increasingly reclusive as old age and immobility have caught up with him. 

His back aches â a dull pain thatâs a legacy of too many years of pounding 
abuse inside the cockpits of racing cars. He stops beside a Toyota transporter 
to take a little pain relief. From his trouser pocket he pulls a plastic box 
with the days of the week marked on top. From the compartment marked 
âSaturdayâ he takes a pill and puts it in his mouth. He swallows hard 
before continuing his journey toward the pit lane. Few people recognize this 
self-effacing, gentle Californian. In the youth- and image-obsessed world of 
modern F1, Phil no longer fits. His age is off the scale â heâs from a 
bygone, pre-Michael Schumacher, era.

So just remember two things: first, the faces of those who do recognize him â 
a vanishingly small number â light up with affection; and second, in his day, 
behind the wheel, he was a legend. In his pomp, from 1958 to 1961, Phil could 
be devastatingly fast. Back then he was swamped by adoring tifosi in the Monza 
paddock. 
 

As a guest of Ferrari, Phil Hill remembers. (LAT photo)

Not today, though. Heâs heading for the entrance to the pit lane for an F1 
Racing photoshoot. The pain-relieving chemicals are slow to kick in, and after 
covering a bit more ground, he asks to sit down. He places his shooting stick 
outside the Williams pit and watches the team prepare their cars for 
tomorrowâs Italian Grand Prix.

Frank Williams sees us from his teamâs pit garage and offers Phil his spare 
wheelchair, which he accepts... grudgingly. âThatâs very kind,â Phil says 
in his soft Californian lilt, âbut I donât want anyone to see me in 
this.â I push him toward our rendezvous and we stop outside the Ferrari pit, 
where mechanics are swarming over Michael Schumacherâs 248. Phil stares at 
the activity, grinding his teeth.

âThe race team was run very differently back then,â he says. âThey 
definitely werenât the tight-knit group you see with Schumacher, [Jean] Todt 
and [Ross] Brawn.â

So the story goes, Enzo Ferrari didnât actually congratulate Phil on winning 
the world title until three days after he clinched it, when Phil visited the 
Old Manâs house in Maranello. Phil refuses to be drawn, saying simply that 
âthings were differentâ.
 

The aftermath of the accident between Wolfgang von Trips (Ferrari Dino 156) 
and Jim Clark (Lotus 21-Climax). Von Trips suffered fatal injuries in the 
accident. (LAT photo)

F1 Racing snapper Darren Heath is waiting for us outside the Renault pit in an 
FIA Mercedes A-class, in which weâre going to complete a lap of the track. We 
decant Phil into the driverâs seat, ready for his first lap of Monza in more 
than 40 years. Now he comes alive. The back pain evaporates and suddenly his 
posture straightens. He doesnât drive fast â no more than 50mph at any 
point â but driving is clearly something he still takes very seriously. He 
shuffles his bottom deep into the seat and cocks his head forward in 
concentration. On the approach to the first chicane he begins to speak, but I 
canât hear what heâs saying over the engine noise. I push my recorder close 
to his mouth and listen to the words later.

âIn an F1 car this place felt damn fast,â he says. âIt seemed like a 
dangerous circuit but, then again, everywhere seemed dangerous in those days. 
It was a slipstream track. Whoever was behind was going to be ahead a minute 
later. It made it challenging because it was very close racing.â He gestures, 
his hands conveying cars running nose-to-tail and wheel-to-wheel. 

âMonza was also the first track at which I decided to wear a seatbelt. It was 
at the âWar of Two Worldsâ race, when the Indy cars came over. Dan [Gurney] 
and I went out to the banking to watch and were alarmed to see the way those 
big cars jumped around. [Luigi] Musso, who was fastest, was half out of the 
car, just hanging on to the steering wheel. 

âWe had a heck of a time locating a belt, but finally found one in Milan. It 
was one of those big military-type belts. The main reason for wanting it was 
because if the cars were going to be as loose as they looked, we didnât care 
what we did. Anything to save the situation.â
 

The master of Monza on the banking in '61 
en route to a tragedy-marred victory. (LAT photo)

Phil stops the car on the outside of the second chicane, beside a dilapidated 
old wall. He gets out and leans against the nearest barrier, looking in the 
direction of Curva Grande. The profile of the corner is unchanged from his day, 
but it wasnât easy-flat back then; more a flick from fifth gear to fourth, 
balancing the car on the throttle until the exit. 
We drive on. At the exit of both Lesmos, he runs the car out to the rumble 
strips and thereâs even a hint of opposite lock as the car bounces around. At 
Ascari, he says simply, âThis is where Alberto diedâ; under braking for 
Parabolica he says, âThis is where Trips was killed.â 

Morbid reminiscence? Perhaps, but Phil was always remarkably candid about the 
dangers of the sport and his struggles to find a balance between the perils and 
pleasures of his profession. 

âPeople were being killed left, right and center back then,â he says. âI 
became hyper-sensitive to the danger, and wasnât sure that I wasnât going 
to kill myself. As a result, racing brought out the worst in me. Without it, I 
donât know what kind of person I might have become. But Iâm not sure I 
liked the person I did become, because I was selfish, irritable and 
defensive.â 

When his teammate, Wolfgang von Trips, then leading the 1961 championship by 
six points, was killed at Monza, Philâs title victory became inextricably 
linked to death. Phil took the race and with it the crown, by a single point, 
but youâd be wrong to call him lucky. Heâd worked hard behind the scenes to 
lay the foundations of that success: the night before the race, he was even 
refusing to drive in the GP unless he got a new engine, because he was worried 
about valve springs breaking on the motor heâd used during qualifying. 

That â61 race was Philâs second successive win at Monza and rounded off a 
four-year run in which he had finished no lower than third in the Italian GP. 
âYes, when I look at my results,â he says, âMonza was always good to me. 
But it was the circumstances that made it difficult for me to remain upbeat. So 
many drivers were getting killed, and they werenât just fellow competitors 
â they were teammates and friends.

âI never thought I could drive Monza better than anyone else. For me, that 
attitude was the classic way to kill yourself. There was no logic to it; I just 
went out there and did it.â
 
At the end of our lap in the A-class, Phil peels into the pit lane and parks. 
He pauses in the cockpit for a second, saying nothing, before we help him back 
into the wheelchair and push him to the Ferrari hospitality area.

He sits down in the main Ferrari motorhome to eat an orange and arrange a time 
for his chauffeur (laid on by Ferrari for the weekend) to pick him up and 
return him to his hotel at Lake Como. Then heâs left to his own devices for a 
few minutes until Jean Todt walks over to welcome him.

âPhil,â says Todt in a loud voice. âItâs great to have you at the race 
â welcome.â 

They discuss Lake Como for a while, but the conversation is one-sided because 
Phil is tired and finds it hard to make himself heard. Todt then disappears 
into a huddle of engineers, who are discussing whether Fernando Alonso held up 
Felipe Massa during qualifying.

While Todt and Phil are talking, Michael Schumacher walks into the motorhome 
and sits at the adjacent table. When Todt has gone, Schumi comes over and 
introduces himself. 

âItâs a pleasure to meet you,â says Phil. âCongratulations on 
everything youâve achieved. Hell, I only won one championship, yet youâve 
got seven â maybe even eight quite soon.â

âTo be honest,â says Michael, âthe first one was the most special. The 
others feel pretty much the same.â

Their conversation moves on to the differences in layout between Monza today 
versus Monza in 1961, and then to the differences in the cars. Michael is 
tenderly solicitous, a quality he rarely shows to the outside world, helping 
Phil to sit down before returning to his table of friends. 


Phil then proffers his thoughts on Ferrari and Monza, a track that he owned for 
a couple of years, in the sense that a sportsman can own the affection of a 
crowd.

âIâve always loved Italy and Monza,â he says. âThis was one of the 
first Continental tracks that I ever went to, and for that reason I have a lot 
of feeling for it. The crowd were very colorful and there is something special 
and distinctive to the sound you get at Monza. Hearing the cars come out of 
Parabolica and pass the pits flat-out has always had a certain sameness, 
whether it was a 2.5-liter V12 or a 1.5-liter V6. I donât know if itâs due 
to the way the sound bounces off the grandstands, but itâs always been the 
same at Monza, and I like that. Yes, Iâve always liked that.â

Philâs chauffeur then appears at the door to drive him back to his hotel. 

Hunched over his lightweight shooting stick, Phil shuffles through the Monza 
paddock towards the swipe gates. One laborious step at a time. And with no 
plans to return.
-Tom Clarkson/F1 Racing

This story is abridged from an article originally appearing in the November 
issue of F1 Racing magazine.

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