Remembering Phil Hill

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The first American-born driver to become Formula 1 World Champion and to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (TR) for Scuderia Ferrari.

Hill became the first American-born driver ever to win Le Mans; it marked the start of a dominant partnership between Hill and Olivier Gendebien. Together, they went on to win Le Mans three times: 1958, 1961, and 1962.

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My first and only sports hero. Unlike most of today’s drivers he was multi-disciplined, his interests and expertise extended beyond cars and racing. And he’s still the only American-born world champion.

I was fortunate to see him race once in serious competition, at Sebring in 1963 and then many decades later, several times at Goodwood Revival.

 

Spa, June 1961.
To reward me for my school results, my godfather (an amateur rallye driver), takes me to my first GP.
I was 11 and attended a boarding school in Belgium at the time.
Knowing nothing about motor racing, it was a total immersion in the sport.
During the Sunday morning, we visited the paddock, and later watched the race from La Source.
I was absolutely mesmerised by the cars, the race, the speed, the noise and the enthusiasm of the crowd.
I had never see anything so beautiful. Phil Hill won, and instantly became my hero.
I follow motor racing since ...

 

That’s very similar to my Sebring experience…..my first race other than Saturday night short track ovals. It was a milestone race in many ways. It was Phil’s first race since leaving Ferrari; the Cobra’s debut in international racing, and John Surtees’s first race for the Scuderia.

Phil led the first lap in the Cobra, with the NART and factory pit crews cheering him on! Shelby once said that that lap sealed the deal for Ford support. Granted, he said a lot of things, but there’s probably some truth in that!

Surtees defied Dragoni’s orders and won the race, which he described to me in great detail in the Goodwood paddock. I saw him standing around by himself so I very uncharacteristically walked over and introduced myself with, “You won the first race I ever attended.” That got him interested, coming from an American, and when I told him which race he really got going!

 

Hill was from a breed of racers who first and foremost, loved the sport of motor racing. They often paid their own way from track to track...not always sure they would have a drive when they got there. I had the pleasure of shaking his hand when he was the main speaker at the annual meeting of the Alfa Romeo Owners of Southern California. There were 350 Alfisti at that meeting. Hill also ran Hill and Vaughan in Samta Monica, one of the top restoration shops in the the US. Hanging in my office is an autographed photo of Hill standing next to the Alfa Romeo Alfetta F1 car. I believe this was a Road & Track centerfold. I wonder what he would say about the state of F1 today.

 

Great stuff Jack, thanks for posting.

 

I'm too young to remember Phil Hill as a racer. And I never got to meet him in person. My introduction came through his articles in Road.& Track, like the one below:

When Olivier Gendebien and I were assigned to drive the new Ferrari GTO at Sebring in 1962,
we were somewhat offended. Stirling Moss, Innes Ireland, the Rodriguez brothers, and other
drivers were in sports prototypes, aiming for an overall win, and we wondered if there was a
conspiracy against us. "Why are we driving this damn coupe?"

There was an excellent reason Olivier and I were in the GTO. The Manufacturers' World
Championship for 1962 was based on points scored by Grand Touring cars. Sports cars were
now called prototypes, and while Stirling, Innes, and the others were running for the glory of the
overall win, we were chasing points for the championship ... and earned the maximum by
winning the GT class and finishing 2nd overall.

As it turned out, the GTO was a delight to drive. That's probably because the emphasis put on the
GTs to win the championship meant there was extra effort put into this car, so the GTO was a
giant step beyond the Grand Touring cars built up to that point. And even though the GTO
shared a great deal with its predecessor, the differences were enough to make "this damn coupe"
something very special.

It's really quite remarkable that anything worked out that well for Ferrari in 1962. During the
winter between the 1961 and 1962 seasons, much of the team's top personnel quit. The list of
those leaving included chief engineer Carlo Chiti, team manager Romulo Tavoni, their key man
in the dyno room, Corrado Manfredini, and Giotto Bizzarrini, the man who had much to do with
the development of the GTO and its predecessor, the 250 Short Wheelbase. Even a number of the
mechanics left Ferrari. Much of the development of the cars was already complete, but even
before the walkout, there were many of us who wondered if Ferrari wasn't spreading things too
thin producing Grand Prix, Grand Touring, and prototype racing cars in addition to the
production models. Young engineer Mauro Forghieri, sharp as we knew him to be, was going to
have one hell of a time keeping everything together.

As the 1962 season progressed, it was the Grand Prix team that suffered, while Ferrari's sports
cars were as successful as ever, winning at Sebring, the Targa Florio, the Nürburgring, and Le
Mans. Lodovico Scarfiotti even won the European Hill Climb Championship in a 2.0-liter
Ferrari. And the GTO began a dominance of Grand Touring racing.

Fundamentally, the GTO is quite similar to its predecessor, the 250 Short Wheelbase (hereafter
called SWB in proper modern Ferrarese), but with improved aerodynamics and the 300-hp Testa
Rossa version of the V12, which was mounted lower in the chassis to drop the center of gravity
and the hoodline.

Development of the GTO for the 1962 racing season began early in 1961. The first test car was a
special Pininfarina-bodied 250 SWB entered in that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. The important
difference was that it had the Testa Rossa V12 instead of the 260- or 280-hp engines that were in
the competition SWBs. Next came a muletta that was an SWB with a crudely hammered-outbody
very roughly approximating the shape of the GTO. After many miles of development driving, the first GTO
was built with the chassis number 3223 and presented to the public at Ferrari's February 1962 press conference.

I'd always liked Ferrari GTs, particularly the SWB's predecessor, the Tour de France, but there
was something very impressive about the GTO, particularly the low hoodline and the tall
regulation windshield. I was surprised by the tiny mouth of the car, particularly compared with
the huge, almost toothy grin of the SWB.

There's also the beautifully purposeful detailing of the GTO, the grille with driving lights on
each side, the little brake cooling ducts, the covered headlights, and the U-shaped upper cooling
slots with their removable covers. Of the two forward-leaning vents behind the wheels, the front
one releases air from around the brakes and tires, while the other is an escape for hot engine
compartment air. There are some variations from one hand-built GTO to the next, improvements
made during the production run and as the cars were rebuilt after racing accidents. Many
designers have tried to improve on the same collection of forms and holes and slots, but have
always come up short.

This was perhaps the first time Ferrari had done serious work on a GT's functional (as opposed to
imagined) aerodynamics. And when first seen, the GTO didn't have a rear spoiler, but by the
time we got our race car—3223—to Sebring, it had a small one riveted across the back of the
car. Soon GTO spoilers were blended into the bodywork as we learned more and more about the
aerodynamics of race cars. Much of this began with a testing session at Monza, when Richie
Ginther tried a 246 SP with its rear tail section removed and found he could go a lot faster
through corners such as Lesmo and the Ascari curve, though the car was slower down the
straights. That led to the first spoiler across the back of a Ferrari. I don't know if this episode was
the initial use of such a spoiler, but it may have been the beginning of the constant month-by-
month fight by a race team to continually refine a car's aerodynamics.

The GTO's beautiful Scaglietti-built bodywork wraps around a space frame that is a development
of the SWB's, even keeping the same 94.4-inch wheelbase. The front suspension is typical
Ferrari, with a pair of unequal-length A-arms, coil springs, Koni shocks, and an anti-roll bar. In
1962, the use of independent rear suspensions was only a few years old at Ferrari, and so we
weren't surprised to find the GTO retained the old live rear axle. And why not? The SWBs had
been quite successful with them, it was a dependable system, and it kept the problems of car
maintenance to a minimum. These are especially good reasons for cars that would get a
great deal of long-distance racing, often in the hands of customers. GTO rear suspensions also have
semi-elliptic springs and Koni shocks, some of which use auxiliary coil springs. There were four
basic locating links for the car's axle, with a Watt linkage to control lateral motion.

Carrying over the SWB's rear disc brakes was considered sufficient, but the extra speed of the
GTO caused Ferrari to employ the same big Girling disc brakes at the front of the GTO that the
sport prototypes used at each wheel. Tires for the GTO were Dunlops—600x15s in front and
700x15s at the back—mounted on the traditional Borrani wire wheels.
In the GTO, the famous V12 engine was in its classic 3.0-liter dimensions, 2953cc from a bore
and stroke of 73.0x58.5 mm. The dry-sump version of the V12 was used as a means of dropping
the engine lower in the chassis. At this point, the V12 was producing around 300 hp and was the
reason the GTO was such a joy to drive.

As usual, when we got the cars in Sebring, the throttle butterflies of the six Weber carburetors
were all gollywumpus and had to be readjusted. Once they were correct, we had one of the most
flexible race engines on the track. You could have driven the car to the circuit in traffic, then
immediately taken it to full revs on the back straight without any fuss. In fact, the GTO was a great
deal more drivable than the Ferrari V8 prototypes with their large carburetor throats and venturis.
We had fun annoying the drivers of the prototypes at Sebring on the odd occasion they'd come up
behind us to pass. By simply pushing a little harder—like using the brakes more aggressively than
normal for that period—we could frustrate the hell out of them for a few laps. They could not get by us.
We'd drive deeply into the hairpin, finish the turn, and just pull their cork leaving the hairpin as the more
highly-tuned prototypes were going putt-putt-putt-putt-whoooooo, stumbling to get full power.
By then we'd be halfway down the straight, already going 30 mph faster than they were because we
got a smooth start out of the corner, thanks to the flexibility of the GTO engine. This sort of engine performance,
matched to the V12's proven reliability, was also one of the major reasons the GTO was such a successful
customer car.

I can't, however, be as enthusiastic about the gearbox, which has Porsche baulking-ring type
synchros. This change may have been an advantage to the younger drivers (and customers) who
weren't adept at proper double-clutch downshifting, but the synchros slowed the entire gear-
changing process. In comparison with other Ferrari racing transmissions, the GTO's long throws
and heavy feel seemed a step backward.That gearbox, however, was the only thing about the GTO that wasn't a pleasure. Looking at the
stark interior now, the car looks slightly unfinished, but in 1962 we couldn't have cared less.
Here was a GT that had quickly taken us out of the era in which a driver was constantly
balancing a car's virtues against its vices, to that time when the basic vices were gone and our
only job was to make maximum use of the virtues. A GT with handling that had neither difficult
understeer nor treacherous oversteer and that was—best of all, perhaps—predictable and
confident.

All those virtues give an interesting two-part nature to the GTO: one half pure race car, but a car
that's so beautiful and easy to drive that the other half could easily qualify as a road car, albeit it
a rather noisy one.

If you remember the GTO's first racing year, you'll recall the fuss that was raised when Ferrari
didn't build the required 100 cars needed to meet the Grand Touring regulations. A total of 32 of
the original type of 3.0-liter GTOs—unofficially referred to as Type 62/63—were eventually
made. Three of the Type 64 GTOs with somewhat different, less curvaceous bodywork were also
built, and four of the original GTOs were rebodied with the new shape. There was also one GTO
with a body like that of the Ferrari 330 LMB, and two of the Type 62/63 style GTOs had 4.0-liter
V12s. But although they didn't officially fit the regulations, the GTOs were, if you don't mind a
little noise and a Spartan interior, the definitive Grand Touring automobiles of the 1960s ... or,
some might well argue, of all time.

Article from Road and Track: https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/news/a18029/ferrari-gto-history/

 

The picture of Phil in the 156 in the Nurburgring carousel was the cover of Road & Track. I still remember my excitement when it appeared at the local drugstore magazine rack.

 

Incredible how those moments stay with you.

 

The photographer was none other than Henry N. Manney, III, and the photograph appeared on the dust jacket of “Phil Hill, Yankee Champion” by William F. Nolan.

 

For a race car driver from his era, he did live a good life. He was well off and well respected. He stayed active in the racing community and drove historic races up until fairly recently, as I recall.

I should do a quarter as well to be satisfied. RIP Sir Hill (for had he been British, surely he would have been knighted).

 

He had a reputation for being sympathetic to the equipment, probably due to his experience as a mechanic, and always brought the car home in one piece. I don’t recall his ever crashing, at least during his professional era. This is probably why the mechanics had so much respect for him.

 

He also strikes me as someone who could explain to mechanics very ably what he felt in the car and what he would like changed to remedy it. That - along with his mechanical sympathy - would quickly make him a mechanic's (and team owner's) friend.