“Being in Formula 1 is a very exposing experience.”
As those who have read his autobiography Watching the Wheels will know, Damon Hill is an open and honest world champion. So it’s no surprise that he shows his weaknesses and struggles in his new film, Hill, which arrives on Sky Documentaries on 2 July. But the level of emotion and poignancy are still the elements that hit home.
Hill teamed up with Sky Sports F1 presenter Simon Lazenby and his production company Sylverent on the project, with Alex Holmes directing. The result is a very personal account, with Damon and his wife Georgie as the talking heads interwoven with plenty of archive footage, both from races and the family’s own videos.
“For my whole life, people had been asking me whether I was going to be a racing driver, like my dad,” says Hill as the film begins. “The truth is I never wanted to become a racing driver and yet there I was within a point of winning the world championship.”
The documentary opens at the 1994 season finale in Australia, which Hill went into with a one-point deficit to Benetton’s Michael Schumacher. They famously clashed, making Schumacher champion, but that is a mere blip compared to the cornerstones of the story. And that is the key word: this is the story of Hill’s journey from the moment his father, double world champion Graham, was killed in a plane crash in November 1975.
It goes back to Damon’s childhood and the abrupt changes – physical and mental – brought about by Graham’s accident, which also killed five others and ultimately left the family with nothing.
“The house came alive when he was at home,” says Hill in the film. “We were very lucky children.” But, having heard of his father’s crash while listening to the news with sister Samantha and having to tell his mother Bette, he entered a different period of his life: “From that moment onwards it was pandemonium, horror really. That was the end.”
Only, for this story, it is really the beginning, as Hill tells Autosport on the JAon F1 Podcast. “It started the day my dad died,” he says. “I've actually felt amazed by the story, even though it was me doing it. And I'm just glad I don't have to do it again.”
Hill was only 15 when his father died, but he immediately felt a responsibility to his sisters. Much of his subsequent motivation was to “put right everything that went wrong”, perhaps too much.
In fact, Hill admits he was well into his F1 career before he learned to let go of the past and stopped trying to be a copy of his dad. “Anger is your worst enemy,” he says, though wanting to be “as responsible as” Graham perhaps helps explain how Hill was able to pick up the Williams team following Ayrton Senna’s fatal crash in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in much the same way as his father did at Lotus in 1968 after Jim Clark’s death.
If Schumacher is the ‘villain’ of the piece, Williams does not come across as the ally
There are a lot of poignant moments: archive video and audio from Graham, including him picking up bits of the wreckage following Clark’s fatal accident at Hockenheim in 1968; the splicing of Damon’s 1994 Spanish GP victory – Williams’s first after Senna’s death – with Graham winning the same race in 1968, just over a month after Clark’s crash; footage of Senna just two hours before the start at Imola; onboard footage of Hill going past the wreckage of Senna’s Williams at Tamburello…
It's Hill’s battles with and through all of this – not to mention going up against Schumacher, who “got under my skin” – that give the film its story arc, culminating in that 1996 title.
There are also fun moments, such as Georgie’s reaction to certain details of Damon’s first Williams contract, which arrives via fax on family video. And insights, such as Hill flying to the 1992 Australian GP finale “because I wanted Frank Williams to see me” ahead of making a call on drivers for the following year, plus openness from Hill on the mental challenges he faced along the way, including feeling like he “was on a very thin ledge” in 1993 and admitting that “my confidence was conditional on me doing well”.
So why make the film and why now? It all came from a conversation at Montreal in 2018, which triggered a long struggle – “it was an epic, a testimony to Simon's determination,” says Hill – to bring everything together.
“We were talking about documentaries that we loved and Senna was the one that was mentioned, and Damon just sort of chirped up,” says Lazenby. “He piped up with, ‘My story's a pretty good one’ and it turned out that obviously it was.”
Having gone through years of therapy and brought everything together for his autobiography, Hill also felt ready for such an endeavour.
“A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that time,” he explains. “At the time, people in the centre of it can't really reveal what's going on because, first of all, you don't have the perspective. Sometimes you don't even know what's going on. And secondly, it's too raw, it's too potent and it needs some of the dust to settle.
“It does take time and I think that's the joy, if you like – the era we're in at the moment is that people are interested in these stories and documentaries like Senna and Netflix have paved the way for expanding the storytelling of sports.”
One of the few criticisms of the film is that there isn’t a response from the Williams side. If Schumacher is the ‘villain’ of the piece, Williams does not come across as the ally and there’s no Patrick Head or Adrian Newey, aside from archive footage.
“I didn't feel supported,” Hill tells Autosport. “But what would they be expected to do? They were thrown into a terrible situation with the loss of Ayrton. They thought they had their key man and I came on board as a test driver, elevated into number two against Alain Prost.
“And so suddenly I'm thrown in. But I happen to have the points necessary to challenge Michael for the championship. And nobody knew what my form would be. So, I pulled my socks up and I nearly got there. And then in 1995 I overreached myself a little bit and got in a bit of a tangle. And I think they probably thought he hasn't got what it takes.
“I think they felt regret – both Patrick and Frank – that they didn't keep me on for the following year, 1997. And they also lost Adrian, who was very upset not to know – that they decided to change drivers when he was led to believe that he would be involved in that decision.”
Both Head and Newey were interviewed by the team, but didn’t make the final cut. “We took the decision early on despite having interviewed Patrick Head, Adrian Newey, Ross Brawn, Sir Jackie Stewart and Ann Bradshaw, to just tell it through the eyes of those that knew the story best, which were Georgie and Damon,” explains Lazenby.
As ever, part of the challenge was distilling all the material – both contemporary footage and the interviews done specifically for the film – and knowing what to leave out. Similarly, Hill’s first wins in 1993 and much of the middle of 1994 are absent. It was a process Damon stayed well away from, putting his trust in Lazenby, Holmes and the production team. The film thus feels tight and engaging over 90 minutes, rather than meandering.
“I would say I'm increasingly angry – there's lots of things to be angry about” Damon Hill
“I contributed insofar as I helped provide material to the film, interviews and so forth,” confirms Hill. “But it was very a light touch from me. I didn't want to have an influence on the way the story was told. I think that's a big mistake if you've got the subject saying, ‘No, that's not how I want it to be told’.”
One slightly surprising element is that the story ends in 1996 when he “completed the mission” – Hill fans are denied the chance to relive his brilliant performance for Arrows in Hungary in 1997 or scoring Jordan’s first F1 win in Belgium the following year. Perhaps there’s scope for a Hill 2, though it’s hard to argue with Damon’s point that “the ending in 1996 is a natural climax. It actually is a positive ending. I call it a weepy with a happy ending.”
“That's the natural endpoint for a viewer who wants to understand the essence of Damon's story,” adds Lazenby.
During the film, Georgie describes a young Damon as “one of the saddest people I’d come across in my life”. So, how does he feel now? Where has his journey brought him to?
“I think the goal is to find contentment and that comes about through understanding how life really works,” says the 64-year-old. “If you want to be happy all the time, you’re probably going to end up in a mental institute. It's the things that make you unhappy and the question is whether or not you can ride those.
“I would say I'm increasingly angry – there's lots of things to be angry about. There's bugger all I can do about a lot of them, but it does infuriate me – watching the world in the state it's in, but what can we do? You just have to get to a point where you have processed stuff.
“I think that was all pre this film. I had already been through all that process. And I did a lot of therapy because I liked to – rather than be a miserable bugger – know, talk, tell my friends about all my sorrows. It’s quite good to go and dump it all in a room with a therapist and then walk out and go, ‘OK, well, I get that now’.
“It's worth doing. And I think if more world leaders did therapy, perhaps the world would be a more peaceful place.”
Pretty deep and meaningful stuff, far beyond motorsport. Rather like the film.
PLUS - Damon Hill’s greatest races
