This is a story about fathers and sons. Damon Hill is sitting in a room in his Surrey home in front of a wall of old photographs.
As he talks about Formula 1 and his life since he won the World Championship in 1996 it is impossible to ignore the image above and to the right of him; a picture of his father Graham in his racing days.
Damon and Graham, father and son, two men who risked their lives driving Formula 1 cars at more than 200 miles per hour. Both world champions. Both inevitably forever linked by family and sport.
And now by cinema. A new documentary about Damon’s life receives its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on Thursday. Hill will be in Glasgow for the screening.
Directed by Alex Holmes, it’s a vivid, fascinating account of a young man growing up in the shadow of a larger-than-life father – a father he lost far too soon – who, for reasons he possibly didn’t totally understand, decides to follow in his father’s tyre marks and, in doing so, forges his own legend.
The film is intense, thrilling, and ultimately less interested in the hows, wheres and whens than the whys. Rather like its subject, I discover, when I speak to him.
Damon Hill is the subject of a new documentary which premieres this Thursday
Hill was the 1996 world champion, finally holding off his great rival Michael Schumacher
Damon and Graham Hill, the first father and son world champion duo in F1 history
Graham and his children Brigitte and Damon in 1966, when he was racing for Owen
‘We seem to understand life backwards,’ Damon tells me. ‘We end up finding out what it’s all about at the end rather than the beginning. And if we could just reverse that we might live our life more intelligently.’ If only.
Still, at 64 – and looking well on it – the thoughtful, articulate man in front of me seems to have a decent handle on where he is these days.
He’s now ended his time as a Formula 1 commentator on Sky, but he’s still going to be involved with the sport working for other broadcasters. He’s off to Australia next month for the first race of the new season.
Inevitably, though, I want to talk to him about the past rather than the present. One of the great strengths of the new documentary is that it is less interested in torque and torsion and more concerned with trauma. Less in the cars than the soft machines who drive them.
And inevitably the beginning of Damon Hill’s story can be found in his father’s.
There is footage of Damon as a boy hanging around at the edge of the frame while his father commands the centre of attention. He’s almost a ghost in the background.
That’s the last thing you could say about his father who was twice world champion and earned the nickname Mr Monaco after five of his 14 grand prix victories came in Monte Carlo. Only Ayrton Senna, on six, can top that.
With his familiar moustache and an air of grace under pressure, Graham Hill had what we’d now call ‘main character energy,’ I suggest to his son.
Hill’s fierce rivalry with Schumacher lit up the mid-1990s as they battled for world titles
With wife Georgie after winning the Argentine Grand Prix in 1996
Hill was dominant with Williams, having joined Formula One as a latecomer in his 30s
Winning the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours in 1996 – one of eight victories in his world championship-winning season
‘The odd thing is my mum says when she first met him he was really shy,’ Damon replies. ‘So, at some point, something clicked and he became an extrovert.
‘He loved life and he was full of life and hopefully I picked up on that aspect of him which was very, very positive.’
Graham retired from racing in July 1975, only to be killed at the end of November that year when the Piper Aztec plane he was flying crashed on approach to Elstree Airfield on a foggy night. Cruelly, Damon, then 15, learned of his dad’s death via a newsflash on the television.
It was understandably a seismic shock to Hill’s family. ‘It was unexpected in the most unkind way, really, because he had retired,’ his son points out. ‘He had spent his life racing, and survived when lots of drivers didn’t.’
As for Damon, he admits he was changed forever as a result. ‘When you’re young you can’t really believe your world is that fragile. It really sends a shock wave all through you.
‘Once that happens you realise it can happen to anyone anytime.’
The question is how much did this tragedy shape Damon’s subsequent life? He wasn’t his father, but did he try to become him by following Graham into Formula 1? Or is that too glib a reading?
‘No, it’s not too glib. I think if I did try to be like my dad it was a homage. I knew I couldn’t be him. He was the original. I didn’t want to be an imitation of him.
Hill admits he could not be his father – and could not be serious all the time
With Murray Walker, the legendary commentator who admitted he had a lump in his throat when Hill won the 1996 world title
Frank Williams brought in Hill in 1993 over more experienced candidates Martin Brundle and Mika Hakkinen
‘I wanted to be myself and I think that’s where the conflict happened a little bit in my career. The real me perhaps wasn’t the kind of personality that would have inspired someone to believe I could race.
‘I like to make light of things. I’m very determined, competitive and I can be serious when I need to be. But I don’t want to be serious all the time.’
Still, he was serious enough to push himself forward to earn a place as a test driver for the Williams team in 1992. A year later he was on the grid as four-time world champion Alain Prost’s team-mate.
‘My career was not ideal,’ he says. ‘I started late. I switched from bikes to cars late. I really didn’t have anything on the horizon and I was past 30. And then, suddenly, the Red Sea opened and I suddenly found myself in Formula 1. I found myself in the right place at the right time and it just took off.
‘But I started my Formula 1 career in my thirties. It’s bonkers. It won’t happen again. No one is going to sign a guy for Formula 1 in their thirties now.’
There is, it should be noted, another story that’s played out in this new documentary, one that is not about father and son, but husband and wife.
Damon married Georgie Hill in 1988 and they have four children together. Their first child Oliver was born with Down’s Syndrome. Georgie’s commentary, it turns out, is one of the great strengths of the film.
At some level, I suggest to her husband, this film is a love story. He doesn’t disagree.
Hill admits he did not see himself being in Formula One but ‘the Red Sea opened’ and he suddenly found himself there
With Nigel Mansell at the 2025 F1 season launch at London’s O2 Arena last week
Three greats of British F1 – Sir Stirling Moss, Lewis Hamilton and Hill in Hamilton’s debut season
‘It’s extraordinary really, she had very different interests,’ he says. ‘She was studying fashion at Kingston Polytechnic and I was a dispatch rider – and she saw nothing in me.’ He laughs at the memory.
‘But I think we were brought together with a common understanding of loss. Her parents had split up and I think she was still grieving over that and I think we both recognised we both needed each other.
‘Then of course we had our son Oliver. He’s got Down’s Syndrome. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. We have ridden all these things out and we’re still together.’
In 1994, Damon missed out on the world title by only one point to Michael Schumacher. But that season is remembered more for the tragic death of Senna, Damon’s team-mate during the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, 24 hours after Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger had also died in qualifying.
Senna was the star of Formula 1 at the time. He had replaced Prost in the Williams team alongside Hill. Who was the man Damon knew? ‘He was private, I would say, and quite intense and serious and fearsomely competitive and fast.
‘He drove with an anger I think, with a fury which I’m not sure he felt he could control. I think he was an extraordinary person and, there are no two ways around it, he was unique and maybe overly intense and overly competitive.
‘I think he scared himself, is the truth.’
Did his tragic death scare Senna’s team-mate at all, I ask? Did it make him question his own involvement in the sport?
The great Ayrton Senna was Hill’s Williams team-mate at the time of his shocking death in 1994
The grid, including Mansell, Schumacher and Hill, pay tribute to Senna on the first anniversary of his death
Alain Prost, Senna and Hill made Williams the dominant team of the 1990s, winning five constructors’ championships and four drivers’ titles
‘Well, have you ever driven a Formula 1 car?’ Damon asks me in reply. ‘It’s exciting. It’s very exciting. And, also, driving the best lap you can in qualifying is such a thrill.
‘You’re meeting a part of yourself, you’re expressing yourself in a way that can only be expressed through racing and through driving a Formula 1 car. So, actually, it’s very difficult to imagine not doing it.
‘The question is, did Ayrton love racing? Yes. Did Roland Ratzenberger love racing? Yes. All the guys that raced loved it.
‘You get an opportunity in your life and you don’t want to die holding this opportunity never having exploited it. That’s almost more frightening.’
There’s a Scottish thread that winds its way through Hill’s own sporting story. ‘I was at the F1 season launch at the O2 the other night and I took a selfie,’ he says. ‘And I suddenly realised I was sitting next to David Coulthard and Jackie Stewart. My son said, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m in Scots Corner”.’
But it’s a journey that inevitably begins in the story of his father. In the 1960s Graham Hill and the great Scottish driver Jim Clark were team-mates at Lotus, and Hill was just a few seconds behind his friend on the road during that tragic Formula 2 race in 1968.
At a wet Hockenheim on lap five, Clark’s Lotus 48 skidded off the track while travelling at more than 150mph, somersaulted and collided with a tree. Hill was one of the people who went out to collect the remains of Clark’s car.
Damon’s father was also a friend and rival to Scotland’s other great Formula 1 driver, three-time World Champion Jackie Stewart.
It was Sir Jackie Stewart (right) who insisted Hill go to Senna’s funeral
Stewart (centre) with fellow former British F1 drivers John Watson and Hill in 2020
Hill and David Coulthard were part of the last wave of great Scottish F1 drivers
‘He’s clearly linked to my dad in many ways,’ Damon says of Stewart. ‘They were very close in a career sense and in those days they had a very strong bond. They knew they were all doing something very lethal and they respected each other.’
In the documentary Damon admits that it was Stewart who persuaded him to go to Senna’s funeral when he didn’t want to. ‘I was taken back to 15 again when my dad died,’ he says. ‘I needed someone to say, “You’re going to have to man up, young lad, and go and do it”.
‘Emotionally I found that very difficult, but it was almost as if my dad said it to me.’
The days of Stewart and Clark are now far distant in the rear-view mirror and it’s been a while since Scotland produced any Formula 1 drivers.
‘DC is retired, Dario Franchitti has retired as well,’ Damon agrees. ‘So, yeah, what are you going to do about it?’
I was hoping to ask you, I tell him. ‘You need to fix that somehow. You need to maybe promote the rich history of Scottish racing drivers.’
Damon took his opportunity to add to that rich history, eventually, having finished runner-up to Schumacher again in 1995. Personality-wise the two rivals couldn’t have been more different. You could never accuse Schumacher of overthinking, I suggest.
‘I think you’ve summed it up perfectly there. He didn’t really spend a lot of time wondering about how good he was,’ Damon says, smiling.
Schumacher and Hill after the German claimed victory at Jerez in his first race back from a two-race ban for overtaking his British rival during the formation lap and ignoring a black flag
Schumacher ‘didn’t really spend a lot of time wondering about how good he was,’ says Hill
Hill eventually held off Schumacher in 1996, with the German finishing third in the drivers’ standings behind Jacques Villeneuve
But in 1996 it was Damon’s turn to win with Schumacher a distant third, becoming the first son of a world champion to become world champion himself, even though he had learned that he would lose his place in the Williams team for 1997. Murray Walker admitted he had a lump in his throat as Damon crossed the line in the final race.
The film ends, understandably, on that note of triumph. But some of the driver’s greatest challenges were still ahead of him. In his 2016 biography Watching the Wheels Damon was open about his battles with depression. Having matched his father’s achievement the question was, what now?
‘We had no template for what happens next. What happens when you make it, when you don’t die? So that was something I had to find out,’ Damon says today.
‘It’s very nice to have achieved something, but then who are you? Who can you be? Loss of identity is something that hits everyone who has had a career that has ended early. And that can be quite disorientating.’
Fathers and sons. Does he now understand better the story he’s been part of, I wonder? ‘Definitely. Sometimes we want to resist forces that are not immediately obvious. There’s some patterns that are lived out that we don’t understand at first but are necessary to experience.
Hill will always be a world champion – but that will also only ever be a part of his story
Hill admits he often asked himself what he was doing in his career and why he was doing it
‘You can’t really change your fate. You are just blindly following a pattern.
‘I think that was a question that was answered in my life. At some times I really was asking myself, why am I doing this? Do I need to do this? Is this really me or is this some sense of duty?
‘But I think it was unavoidable. It had to be done. It’s the Hamlet dilemma. Do you take arms or just sit there twiddling your fingers and wonder?’
Damon Hill didn’t just sit there. As a result, he will always be a world champion. But that will also only ever be part of his story.
The world premiere of Hill will take place at Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT 1) in Glasgow on Thursday, February 27, at 8.30pm with Damon Hill and the film’s director Alex Holmes in attendance. It will then be a Sky Exclusive later in the year, and released on DVD.
