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the car instead of Gendebien and Taffy proceeded to drive very fast indeed, to such effect that, with the help of a couple of retirements, he was in third place at the finish. The bad luck that dogged Hill in the 1000 Kms stuck with him in the German Grand Prix which, mercifully, had returned to its rightful home, the Nordschleife at the Nurburgring. There he became locked in battle for the World Championship with his team-mate, Taffy von Trips. The beautiful sharknose Ferrari 156 was clearly the class act of the 1961 cars, but Stirling Moss was still the class act among drivers and, at Monaco, he produced a mesmerising performance to defeat the Ferraris with Rob Walker’s Lotus-Climax, von Trips then won the Dutch GP from Phil, who then won the Belgian from Taffy, but both failed to finish the French GP. Taffy won the very wet British GP and when they arrived at the Nurburgring von Trips led the title race with 27 points to Phil’s 25, with three rounds to go. As ever, Enzo Ferrari refused to nominate a team leader, much to Hill’s chagrin. “I was very much the senior driver, having been with Ferrari since 1955, but The Old Man refused to nominate me as Number One. I always got along with Trips, but I never considered him a rival, as he had been on and off the team a couple of times. More to the 1962 German GP, Nurburgring - Phil Hill point, he had had a number of accidents and had earned himself the nickname, von Crash. By 1961 it was hard to tell if he had matured or not. It was an awkward position to be in because, even though I was supposed to have an advantage, there was none because my principal adversary was von Crash, and that was not a pleasant situation.” That is fair comment, but it is equally fair to say that by 1961 Taffy had matured, and considerably. In common with Hill the new, mid-engined Ferraris were very much to his liking and by this time had won the Targa Florio (with Olivier Gendebien) as well as two GPs. Taffy was on a roll and had every chance of becoming Germany’s first World Champion, which would put him among the pantheon of German drivers with the pre-war giants Rudolf Caracciola, Bernd Rosemeyer and Herrman Lang. To do that and to win the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring in the process would make Taffy an opera-style hero of Wagnerian proportions! In the first practice session on the Friday morning it was Jo Bonnier in the works Porsche who was fastest, with a time of 9 mins 06.6 secs, comfortably inside the lap record of 9’ 09.2”, which Stirling Moss had set with the Vanwall in 1958. Now in the Lotus-Climax, Stirling recorded 9’ 10.5”, but was shaded by Phil Hill with 9’ 10.2”, whereas von Trips could only manage 9’ 23.5” before the Ferrari’s V6 dropped a valve. This required an engine change, so he missed the afternoon session completely. In Taffy’s enforced absence, Phil Hill continued where he had left off in the 1000 Kms race, by pulverising the lap record and becoming the first man to get around the Nurburgring in under nine minutes. Ferrari were again using Dunlop’s new, high hysteresis D12s, which were essentially rain tyres but which also provided a tremendous improvement in the dry - for a few laps. Team Lotus and Porsche were also equipped with D12s and, as Denis Jenkinson reported in Motor Sport: ‘Phil Hill was having to work very hard to get his times down below Bonnier, who had done 9 mins 04.8 secs and was driving with great determination. Hill was lapping at around 9’ 03.0”, leaping and bouncing about and getting round some corners more by luck than judgement, when suddenly he got the car in step with the bumps and twists and went round in a shattering 8’ 55.2”. Next lap he was back above nine minutes and admitted freely that it had been a freak lap in which everything had gone right for once, but there was little hope of repeating it.’ Nobody else broke nine minutes and Phil’s astonishing lap (which apparently left him glassyeyed and grinning from ear to ear) gave him pole position, ahead of Jack Brabham (Cooper-Climax V8) on 9’ 01.4”, Stirling Moss (Lotus-Climax) on 9’ 01.7” and Jo Bonnier (Porsche) on 9’ 04.8”. In Saturday’s practice von Trips recorded 9’ 05.5”, which put him on the second row. Phil Hill looked set to record his first win at the Nurburgring, but a change in the weather was to put paid to that. By 1 pm on the Sunday it was cloudy and wet, so all the teams on Dunlop fitted the D12 rain tyres. By 1.45 the sun was shining and Vic Barlow of Dunlop was telling everyone to fit dry-weather tyres. Ferrari and Porsche did as they were told, but Team Lotus and Stirling Moss refused. Two weeks before Lotus had completed a full race on D12s at Solitude and felt sure that they could do the same at the Ring. They were right, and their decision played right into the genius hands of Stirling Moss. The race began in the dry, but there were wet patches all round the circuit. At the end of the first lap Moss led from Phil Hill, Hans Herrmann (Porsche), Dan Gurney (Porsche), Graham Hill (BRM-Climax) and von Trips. Despite the fact that the rain held off for most of the race, Hill and von Trips were unable to get past Moss, who managed to keep ahead of them by eight to ten seconds most of the time. After Monaco, British journalists had made much of the fact that Stirling had beaten the Ferraris despite his 4-cylinder Coventry-Climax engine having some 20-30 bhp less than the V6. True enough, but they failed to mention that what the Lotus lacked in bhp it more than made up for in superior roadholding. That, allied to Moss’ extraordinary skill, had put paid to the Ferraris at Monaco and was now doing the same at the Nurburgring, which is Monaco times seven. So with Moss out in front the race was actually for second place between the two Ferrari drivers and Hill was having a hard time keeping von Trips behind him. Taffy knew the Ring very well, having raced there many times since making his debut on his motorbike in 1951. Now he put his knowledge to good use, determined to win his home Grand Prix in front of a vast crowd of more than 300,000, reportedly the largest since the days before the war. With von Trips in a Ferrari and Porsche out in force, the Germans had every expectation of a home win and Taffy was determined to provide it for them. On lap eight Moss set a new lap record in 9 mins 2.8 secs and Taffy got past Phil for the first time. He then lapped in 9’ 1.6” and all round the circuit the spectators greeted the announcer’s news with keen anticipation of a sub nine-minute lap. They didn’t have to wait long, as Gregor Grant described in Autosport: ‘The 10th lap was a real sizzler. Moss did a lap in around nine minutes flat, but von Trips was announced as having broken the nine minutes barrier for the first time with 8 mins 59.9 secs. No sooner had this been recorded, than the PA came out with the news that Phil Hill had reduced this to 8 mins 57.8 secs. The two Ferraris were now virtually wheel to wheel, 8.7 secs behind Moss.’ On the next lap Phil dived inside Taffy as they went into the South Turn, but by the time they reached the bridge at Adenau the German was back in second spot, although neither of them could get to grips with Moss. Then it began to rain and Hill regained second place. At the end of the 14th and penultimate lap he led von Trips across the line by a few feet, but now some 15 seconds behind Moss. On that last lap the rain became much worse and as they entered the 3-km straight for the last time Taffy was once again ahead of Phil, which was just what Phil wanted. “You always got a good tow on that straight in those days,” he recalls, “so Trips and I tried to out-fumble each other on that last lap. We both wanted to be behind so that we could slipstream the other and be first across the line. I was behind and just about to gobble him up when we hit a rain squall as we were going through the swerves after the Antoniusbuche bridge. He hit it first and I saw him lose his Ferrari just before I lost mine. “It looked as though we were in for a monumental crash that would take us both out and as we slithered around I was trying to dodge him. Bearing in mind my feelings about von Crash I shouldn’t have let myself get tangled up in that mess, but I did. When we got straightened out he was further ahead than he had been originally, so he finished second behind Moss.” And 21.4 seconds behind Moss, to be precise, with Hill 1.1 secs further back. Moss, the Ringmeister supreme, had done it again. ‘Many people are no doubt puzzled by the fact that the two Ferraris which made the fastest laps finished behind Moss, who never went round so quickly on any single lap,’ wrote Philip Turner in The Motor. ‘The answer to this is that the race had three distinct phases: Phase One when the circuit was still wetfrom the morning rain and Moss was faster than the Ferraris;
this merged gradually into Phase Two as the roads dried and the Ferraris became as fast as, and then faster than, Moss and so began cutting down his lead. But then came Phase Three, when it began to rain again and the Ferraris slowed and began to fall back from Moss. The effects of Phase One and Phase Three were magnified by the oil on the circuit.’ But the real answer (aside from the Moss factor) lay in those high-hysteresis tyres, which Ferrari decided not to use on the advice of Dunlop. “Stirling out-fumbled us by using those Dunlops,” says Phil, “but we couldn’t have done that because the Ferraris would never have completed the race on one set. Our cars were much harder on tyres than the Lotus and, even so, Stirling’s were in tatters at the end.” In tatters, but triumphant! Stirling’s win left von Trips four points ahead of Hill in the World Championship as they went into the next and penultimate round, the Italian GP at Monza. That became a tragedy with the death of von Trips and 11 spectators on the second lap of the race and Phil, aware of the crash but not of its outcome, drove his Ferrari 156 to victory and the World Championship, albeit in the saddest of circumstances. The tragedy brought the Italian church and press crashing down on Enzo Ferrari, who was pilloried by both for building cars that killed people. A few days later Hill went to see him at his home and he played the grief-stricken padrone, almost begging Phil to stay with him for 1962. He agreed, only for Ferrari to announce shortly afterwards that he would not be sending his cars to America for the USGP at Watkins Glen, in October. Ferrari had won the Manufacturers’ and Drivers’ Championships, so what was the point? Which is how Phil Hill was denied the opportunity of racing before his countrymen as America’s first World Champion. His year, which had started out with with a victorious bang at Sebring, ended not so much with a whimper as a slap in the face. And it got worse for in November, just days after Hill signed his contract for 1962, he learned that Ferrari had sacked no fewer than seven of his key personnel, including Chief Designer Carlo Chiti, Engineer Giotto Bizzarini and Team Manager Romolo Tavoni. The result of all this upheaval chez Ferrari meant that the Scuderia had a disastrous season in F1 yet, perversely, made a clean sweep of the Sportscar Championship, which comprised a pathetic four races. Phil won two of them, starting with the 1000 Kms at the Nurburgring and it is unfortunate that his one and only Ferrari victory at the Ring should have been in what Autosport’s Martyn Watkins called ‘an unusually dull race’. The Scuderia sent a truly mixed bag, comprising two V6s -a 196SP for Giancarlo Baghetti/ Lorenzo Bandini and a 246SP for Hill/Gendebien; one V8 - a 268 SP for the Rodriguez brothers, and a V12 - a 4-litre GTO for Mike Parkes/Willy Mairesse. There were two flat-eight Porsches for Graham Hill/Hans Herrmann and Dan Gurney/ Jo Bonnier; a Birdcage Maserati with revised bodywork for Masten Gregory/Lucky Casner and two entries from John Ogier’s Essex Racing Stable, the 1.5-litre Lotus 23 for Jim Clark/Trevor Taylor and the Aston Martin DBR1 for Bruce McLaren/Tony Maggs. The practice sessions were held in wet or damp conditions, so although Phil Hill was fastest, his time of 9 mins 25.2 secs was well outside his remarkable lap record of the year before. Next up was the Parkes/Mairesse Ferrari GTO (powered by a 4-litre Superamerica engine) with 9’ 34.8” and then the Porsche of Bonnier/Gurney in 9’ 36.4”. Bruce McLaren got the seven-year-old Aston round in a remarkable 9’ 43.1” (just 00.1 secs shy of Moss’s lap record in 1958!) and Jim Clark recorded 9’ 48.9” in the little Lotus - seventh fastest overall. It had been raining heavily just before the start and Clark was able to put all 100 bhp of the Lotus onto the tarmac and led all the more powerful opposition for 12 laps until the Lotus went off the road (See Ringmeister 11, Jim Clark). This left Willy Mairesse momentarily in front with the big GTO, but when he stopped to hand over to Mike Parkes, Phil Hill moved into the lead and he and Gendebien stayed there until the end. Mairesse and Parkes finished a splendid second, ahead of Graham Hill/Hans Herrmann (Porsche) and Bruce McLaren and Tony Maggs, who brought their venerable Aston home in a very creditable fourth place. Phil set fastest lap in 9 mins 31.9 secs and had at last won a race at the Nurburgring, but that apart it was an unremarkable victory with no fireworks - rather a damp squib, in fact. But a victory at the Nurburgring is worth several at lesser circuits and Phil was delighted to have won at last on his favourite track. “It was something of a surprise, actually,” he remembers. “Olivier and I were not optimistic beforehand because Ferrari had such a poor record in the 1000 Kms. Ascari and Farina had won the first one, in 1953, but that was it.” Poor Phil was even less optimistic when he returned for the Grand Prix in August, for although he and Gendebien had won Le Mans again, in truth his career with Ferrari was in free-fall. The 1962 version of the once successful sharknose 156 was hopeless, having had no real development since the departure of Carlo Chiti and Phil was also at loggerheads with the new Team Manager, Eugenio Dragoni. The latter was determined that his protégé, Lorenzo Bandini, should become Italy’s first World Champion since Alberto Ascari and was constantly singing his praises to Enzo Ferrari while denigrating Hill’s performance at every given opportunity. (He would do the same with John Surtees a couple of years later). And there was a strike at the Ferrari factory. The Scuderia sent three cars with the 120degree V6 engine for Hill, Lorenzo Bandini and Giancarlo Baghetti and a 1961 car with the early, 65-degree V6 for Ricardo Rodriguez. Ricardo was not pleased to be given this old nail and showed his displeasure by being fastest of all the Ferrari drivers in practice, recording 9 mins 14.1 sees. This was a tremendous performance to be sure, but it was still a massive 19 sees away from Hill’s pole position time of the previous year. Even more worrying was the fact that, in the latest 120-degree Ferrari, Hill himself could only manage 9’ 24.7”, which was almost 30 seconds slower! Despite Rodriguez’ bravura performance, it was clear that the Ferraris were going backwards, fast. Just to rub their noses in it, Dan Gurney took pole position in his Porsche with a stunning 8’ 47.2”. When the Grand Prix eventually got under way, after some very heavy rain, it was Gurney who led on the opening lap, closely followed by Graham Hill (BRM) and Phil Hill, who had made a terrific start from the fourth row. In the very damp and misty conditions Phil held his own for a while and briefly did battle with Jo Bonnier (Porsche) and Ricardo Rodriguez, but on lap five he stopped at the pits to have his windscreen cleaned and a new vizor fitted to his helmet, as both were covered in oil. By now the Ferrari was handling very badly and, after soldiering on for a while Hill came back into the pits at the end of lap nine to retire with broken rear suspension. Just to complete his day, Rodriguez brought the 65-degree 156 home in sixth place. After winning four out of six Grandes Epreuves in 1961, Ferrari failed to win a single one in ‘62. Disillusioned, and furious with Dragoni, Hill left the Scuderia at the end of that season and signed up with ATS, the team formed by Carlo Chiti and Romolo Tavoni, among others, after their departure from Ferrari. It was a disastrous union and the less said about it the better. Phil was back at the Ring in May, 1963 for the 1000 Kms, driving a works, 2-litre, flat-eight Porsche with Jo Bonnier. They were in third place when the race was handed to them on a plate. On lap 17 the leading Ferraris of John Surtees/Willy Mairesse and Mike Parkes/Ludovico Scarfiotti got tangled up when Parkes spun at Aremberg. Mairesse managed to rejoin the race, but Parkes was out and Phil found himself with a healthy lead. ‘For five glorious laps Hill led the race, while Mairesse worked his way back through the field into second place at the end of lap 21.’ noted Autocar. ‘Then it was Hill’s turn to go -when he missed a gear and crashed not far from the spot where Ferrari had lost its second car for the weekend. This was too much for the German crowds, whose patriotism must be almost unparalleled in motor racing, and they began a steady flow away from the circuit.’ In fact, Hill’s crash was not due to a missed gear, but to one of those isolated rain showers that frequented the Nurburgring. “I went off the road at Aremberg, just before the Fuchsrohre,” says Phil. “I was being urged to go faster and faster by our Team Manager, Huschke von Hanstein, because one of the two Ferraris which had crashed into each other was back in the race
and catching me. I was going as fast as I could, but then we had a typical Eifel shower and you come to a little rise when you get to view the turn at Aremberg before the Fuchsrohre and if it has been raining you’re never going to stop. I came over that rise, the road was wet and I did everything I could to get slowed down enough to get under the bridge and down the hill. I failed, slid off the road and hit a sapling, which bent the exhaust pipe over on the Porsche. Had it been a Ferrari I could have stuck a branch up the exhaust and straightened it, but you couldn’t do that with a Porsche, so I was out of the race. Everybody was very unhappy, especially Huschke!” And with good reason, for up to that point Porsche were looking at their first outright win at the Ring. Phil joined the fledgling Ford team in 1964 and he and Bruce McLaren were entered for the 1000 Kms in the Lola-Ford GT prototype, designed by Eric Broadley and powered by Ford’s 4.2-litre V8. It was no surprise that John Surtees should be fastest in practice, recording 8 mins 57.9 secs in the P4 Ferrari, but Phil surprised everybody by posting second-fastest time with 9’ 04.7”. At the end of the first lap Hill was in second place behind Surtees. He was soon overtaken by the Ferraris of Graham Hill (275P) and Mike Parkes (GTO) but managed to keep in touch with them until gear selection problems slowed him. After 11 laps Phil handed over to McLaren, but the Lola-Ford was retired with broken rear suspension mountings four laps later. After the ATS debacle, Hill had joined Cooper for GPs in 1964, but it was a case of leaving one shambles for another. In the German GP, Phil qualified eighth fastest and his Climax V8 blew up halfway down the 3 km straight on the second lap, so he parked the car in the hedge and walked back to the pits. That was the last time he took part in the German GP, but in the 1965 1000 Kms he and Bruce McLaren shared one of the two Shelby American-entered Ford GT40s. Theirs had a 5.3-litre V8, whereas the Chris Amon/Ronnie Bucknum car had a normal, 4.7-litre unit. Ferrari entered a 330P2 for John Surtees/Ludovico Scarfiotti and a 275P2 for Mike Parkes/Jean Guichet. There was also a 275P2 for Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, entered by Maranello Concessionaires, Stewart having his first race at the Ring. In Motor Sport, Denis Jenkinson opined: ‘The only driver among the 126 taking part who was capable of challenging John Surtees, given an equal car, was Graham Hill, but as he was driving a 3.3-litre Ferrari against the 4-litre of Surtees, the outcome was inevitable.’ Jenks got the wrong Hill, for it was Phil who chased Surtees from the start, although the GT40 was no match for the P2 and after three laps Surtees led Hill by 30 secs. After seven laps a driveshaft broke and Phil was out. He and Bruce McLaren were then put into the 4.7-litre GT40 after it had lost some 12 minutes by running out of fuel. They brought it home in eighth place. In 1966 the gifted and innovative Jim Hall took the brave step of embarking on a European racing programme with his remarkable Chaparral cars, beginning with the Nurburgring 1000 Kms. Hall himself stayed at home to prepare for Le Mans, entrusting his entry for Germany to his partner, Hap Sharp. Hall may have been a Texas oil millionaire, but his foray into European racing was a stark contrast to that of Ford, which was already throwing millions of dollars at its racing programme. Team Chaparral rolled into the Nurburgring garage square with the car on a trailer towed by a Chevvy pickup and accompanied by Sharp, his wife Susie and just three mechanics. No one seeing the arrival of this minimalist entry making its debut at the Ring would have given it a chance of victory. However, while the trackside personnel were undoubtedly Nurburgring virgins, their drivers were most definitely not, for Hall had persuaded Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier to drive for him, and they would pull off a stunning victory. The 2D was powered by a 5.4-litre, Chevrolet V8 which produced 420 bhp and drove the rear wheels through a modified Corvair gearbox which, with the help of General Motors, Jim Hall had modified for racing. The European press referred to it as a two-speed automatic, but in fact it was a torque-converter which allowed clutchless shifting between gears. The car ran on Firestone tyres and Hap Sharp and his men had cut two grooves round each on one set, which was for really wet weather. It would be needed. The Chaparral was in the Prototype class, up against the 4-litre Ferrari P3 of John Surtees and Mike Parkes and three 2.2-litre Porsches. There were also two works, 2-litre Dino Ferraris present, one for Ludovico Scarfiotti and Lorenzo Bandini, the other a North American Racing Team car for Richie Ginther and Pedro Rodriguez, both of which would prove to be indecently quick. John Surtees was fastest in practice, getting the P3 round in a stunning 8 mins 31.9 sees, but it was Phil Hill who set tongues wagging by making second fastest time in the Chaparral with 8’ 35.4”. And it was Surtees who led from the start, completing the opening lap 17 sees ahead of the Dino Ferrari of Scarfiotti/ Bandini, with Jo Bonnier in third place with the Chaparral. Jo was up to second after three laps, but Surtees now had a lead of 50 seconds and was running away with the race. Not for long, as at the end of lap six he came trundling into the pits with broken rear suspension and by the time the Ferrari mechanics had fixed it and sent Mike Parkes back into the race, the Ferrari was down in 21st position. And the Chaparral was now leading! But only just, for Scarfiotti was driving an inspired race in the 2-litre Dino and giving Bonnier in the 5.4-litre Chaparral a very hard time. Indeed, the Dino took the lead at the end of the 11th lap, when Bonnier stopped to hand over to Hill. One lap later and Bandini took over from Scarfiotti, but he proved to be no match for Phil, who proceeded to drive away from the little Ferrari and by the end of lap 16 he had a lead of more than 90 seconds. Meanwhile, Mike Parkes was climbing back through the field with the 4-litre Ferrari, but no sooner had Surtees taken over again than the same suspension trouble occurred and by the time that was put right he was more than a lap behind Hill. Who drove superbly to consolidate the Chaparral’s lead before handing back to Jo Bonnier at half-distance. Jo kept the momentum going and when Hill took over for the final stint the white car from Texas was more than three minutes ahead of the Scarfiotti/Bandini Dino, with the sister car of Ginther/Rodriguez a further 21 seconds behind. The race had started in bright sunshine, but now the rain clouds were gathering ominously and the Chaparral team produced their specially cut Firestone rain tyres, should they be needed. They were, as Denis Jenkinson reported in Motor Sport: ‘At the end of the 37th lap the Chaparral stopped at the pits, by which time the rain had almost stopped and blue sky was appearing, but Hill knew that the storm was still drifting across the 14-mile circuit and that he was going to have to drive into it again. The special Chaparral-Firestones were fitted, the change of wheels taking a long time as they use a six-bolt hub fixing and there was further delay when the rear ones would not go under the wheelarches until the car was jacked up higher than the quick-lift jack would raise it... No one was quite sure how Hill would get on with the ribbed tyres, nor how they would handle if the track dried completely, but all doubts were dispelled when he pulled out 24 seconds more lead over the Dino in one lap. The next lap the lead was 96 sees, so all was well and obviously Phil Hill had everything well under control. ‘He was not having an easy time for the windscreen wiper had gone berserk, first only wiping half of the screen and then disappearing down under the scuttle, even though the arm was still 1967 Nurburgring, Phil Hill flailing about. As he went through the slow bends at Adenau-Forst he took the opportunity to open the gull-wing door, lean out and wipe some of the muck off the screen.’ “I knew I had to so something,” says Phil, “but I couldn’t risk shutting off the engine because the batteries were so small that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it restarted. And I could not stop the car because crunching it into gear when the engine was running was a definite no-no.” Phil’s out-of-car activity caused consternation in the Chaparral pit, for it was seen by a TV camera and this led to a report that the car had broken down and Hill was climbing out. Happily, this was not the case and Phil roared past the pits to begin his last lap. As Jenks wrote, ‘he put all his concentration into the last 14 miles to bring the mud-spattered but very healthy Chaparral over the line to win the 1966 ADAC 1000 kilometre race. Hap Sharp, who was in charge of the team, his wife, who kept the
watches going, and the three mechanics, were justifiably overcome with joy and they just hugged each other like a happy family, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Among the first to congratulate them were Mike Parkes, John Surtees and Mauro Forghieri.’ It was indeed a famous victory, which made Phil King of the Nurburgring and consolidated his place in the gallery of Ringmeisters. And he almost did it again the next year. Driving with Mike Spence this time, Phil took the Chaparral 2F, with its huge rear wing, round in 8 mins 31.9secs to win pole position on the grid. He lost time at the start, as Denis Jenkinson noted in Motor Sport: ‘Nothing happened in the Chaparral for a long time, as Phil Hill was struggling into his safety harness...’ At the end of the first lap Jo Siffert (Porsche) led from the Porsches of Stommelen, Mitter, Neerpasch and Hawkins ‘and, accompanied by a gasp from the vast crowd, Phil Hill, who thundered by in the Chaparral, headlamps blazing. Just how many cars he had got by on that opening lap no one will ever really know, but it must have been at least half the entry and he had been passing them on all sides. With five Porsches still in front of him he set off on the second lap, picking them off one by one, during which time he recorded the fastest lap of the race, and was already catching and lapping the tail end of the field. In spite of practically coming to rest while two “club racers” had a battle without looking in their mirrors, Hill lapped in 8 mins 42.1 secs and was in third place at the end of the lap and in sight of Stommelen.’ He soon caught him but miscalculated the number of Porsches he had overtaken and, despite pit signals telling him he was in second place, thought he was leading and eased off. Eventually, the penny dropped and he went after Siffert, taking the lead as they started their ninth lap. It would be nice to report that Phil went on to win what was his last race at the Nurburgring but, sadly, his brilliant drive brought no reward. No sooner had he handed the car to Mike Spence than the automatic gearbox failed. Two months later they scored a tremendous win with the 2F in the BOAC 6 Hours at Brands Hatch, beating the Ferrari P4 of Jackie Stewart and Chris Amon by almost a minute. And that was when Phil decided to retire from motor racing, America’s first (and then only) World Champion saying farewell with an impressive victory in an American car. However, it is not one of his two Nurburgring victories that Phil regards as his finest drive there, nor his double assault on the sportscar and Fl lap records in 1961. “I guess it would have to be my very first drive in 1956. To be able to pass people like Taruffi and some of the other top European drivers on the Ring made me feel awfully good. The whole package was tremendously challenging. It was my favourite circuit of all, I loved it.”