Phil Hill, 81; only American-born driver to win the Formula One title
The reserved, Santa-Monica-raised Hill won for Ferrari in 1961 and was a three-time winner at both Le Mans and Sebring, among other victories. He never suffered a serious injury.
Phil Hill, a reserved Californian who became a gifted race-car driver and the only American-born driver to win the Formula One international auto-racing championship, died today He was 81.
Hill died at Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula of complications from Parkinson's disease, according to John Lamm, a close friend who is also editor-at-large of Road and Track magazine.
"It's a sad day," said Carroll Shelby, a close friend of Hill's who won Le Mans himself in 1959 and then became a celebrated sports car builder. "Phil was an excellent race car driver with a unique feel for the car, and his real expertise was in long-distance racing."
Hill obituary: The obituary of race-car driver Phil Hill in Friday's California section quoted Shav Glick, the longtime motor sports writer for The Times, saying "Phil set the standard" for American drivers overseas and that he "also was a great representative of the sport." The comments were not written by Glick in 2006, as the obituary said, but were spoken by Glick when Times staff writer Jim Peltz interviewed him that year.
Hill won the Formula One title for Ferrari in 1961. He also was the first American to win the 24-hour endurance sports-car race at Le Mans, France -- a race he would win twice again -- and he won the Sebring 12-hour race three times, among many other victories.
"Phil set the standard" for other American drivers who competed overseas, such as Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti, said the late Shav Glick, longtime motor sports writer for the Times, in 2006.
(The Italian-born Andretti, whose family emigrated to the United States when he was a teenager, won the Formula One title in 1978.)
Hill "also was a great representative of the sport," Glick said, adding that he was "quiet and not given to self-promotion. A very gracious man."
Shelby recalled Hill as a man with "multiple talents."
"Phil tuned pianos, he could take anything apart and put it back together, and he loved opera," Shelby told The Times.
Hill won his Formula One championship at the season's penultimate race in Monza, Italy, after he had swapped the series lead all year with his Ferrari teammate Wolfgang von Trips of Germany.
In the same race, Trips died in a crash that also killed 14 spectators. As a result, Ferrari did not participate in the season's final race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and Hill was unable to celebrate his championship in his home nation.
Hill, despite driving with safety gear in his race car that paled by today's standards, never suffered a serious injury in his career. He retired from driving in 1967 at 39.
"I had an amazing amount of luck to race for 22 years and not a drop of blood or a broken bone," Hill once said. Then he quipped: "Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough."
