#86 – Damon Hill: Overcoming loss, achieving success, and finding one’s identity

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  This is a human story told through racing

  Attia frames the conversation around Hill's autobiography Watching the Wheels, a roughly 360-page book with only one chapter on his 1996 world championship. The rest deals with loss, depression and identity. Hill wrote it partly for readers who have struggled. He wanted to show that success in sport or anywhere else is 'never plain sailing', and not to gloss over the difficult parts.

• 02

  Drivers of his father's era raced against stark odds

  Graham Hill, a two-time world champion, raced when grids had about 26 drivers and losing two in a season was not unusual. Hill calls that roughly a 12-to-1 chance of not surviving each year, compounded year after year. His christening was attended by racing figures including Stirling Moss and Bruce McLaren. That shows how much of the sport's world made up his childhood.

• 03

  Losing his father at 15 left lasting, unresolved trauma

  In November 1975 Graham Hill died flying his own plane, about six months after retiring, when he was 46. Damon was 15, his sisters 16 and about 11. He still vividly remembers his mother screaming. He says going back to that moment brings back the same physical sensations, so he chooses not to replay it in detail. He didn't recognise these as unresolved issues until a couple of years after he stopped racing.

• 04

  He felt a quiet dread of matching his father's lifespan

  Hill describes a 'creeping anxiety' of following a pattern. If he was different from his father, he had to live longer than him, which meant past 46. That fear sat in the background of his career and his choices.

• 05

  Motorbikes came first, and cars were a pragmatic switch

  Shortly after his father's death, a family friend invited him to watch bikes at Brands Hatch. His mother let him race, and he started winning around 1983–84. Money was always short. Only Barry Sheene really made a living from bikes, and the alternative was risking the Isle of Man, so cars became the practical route. He preferred bikes because the rider is 'the projectile' and 'the acrobat'.

• 06

  He became an F1 rookie at 32 against the odds

  At 29 he had lost his racing drive. He had just bought a house as mortgage rates hit 17%, and his first child, Oliver, was born with Down syndrome. He kept going anyway. He became the Williams test driver in 1991–92, learning the active-suspension cars. When Mansell left after winning in 1992, he stepped into a race seat for 1993 alongside Prost.

• 07

  Imola 1994: the weekend Senna died

  After years of relative safety with carbon-fibre cars, Rubens Barrichello crashed badly and Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying. Then Senna, Hill's teammate, died. Hill had driven past the scene of Ratzenberger's crash and knew 'that was not a good one'. Afterwards he went through the data with engineers. He says Senna chose a bumpier inside line through Tamburello than he would have. Hill also says Senna had talked to his wife about wanting a family. In Brazil the country stopped for three days, and over a million people lined the streets.

• 08

  Depression is a signal to change direction

  Hill sees depression as 'a way of telling us we're going the wrong direction'. It is a drain of energy that starts to drag you down, telling you to reorient. He had a 'half-cooked' identity. He was racing partly for the family name, and he had to separate that from what he wanted for himself. Therapy and that reframe helped him.

• 09

  He worked to break the cycle for his own children

  Attia's summary: Hill lost his father to death, but his children risked losing theirs emotionally if he didn't deal with it. Hill says you can't rebuild a family that died, but you can choose what you pass on.