A motorcycle fanatic, Damon Hill arrived at Magny-Cours in 1983 with no ambition other than to have fun. He didn’t know it yet, but his life was about to change.
No! When his mother Bette told him one day that Mike Knight would like to welcome him to Magny-Cours, Damon made it clear that he wasn’t to be counted on. “I had absolutely no interest in racing cars”, says the son of the late two-time world champion and unique Triple Crown winner Graham Hill. “My life was motorcycles. I knew almost nothing about motorsport, apart from a few notions about Formula 1. One day, my mother came to tell me that there was a school in France, and that a certain Mike was ready to introduce me to single-seaters if I was interested. But I wasn’t interested. I told her I was already financing my bike and didn’t have any extra money to spend. She then told me that he would take care of everything. So I said why not! Honestly, I was never quite sure who contacted the other first: my mother, who wanted me to stop riding, or Mike, who was looking to give his school a more international dimension?”
Some time later, Damon found himself on a plane with other students and a journalist from Cars & Car Conversion magazine. “Everyone was talking about Doctor Jonathan Palmer winning in Formula 2, but I had no idea who he was”, says the British driver, still laughing today. “I arrived at Magny-Cours with the mindset of a guy who’s come to have fun. Nothing more than that. I had no ambitions. I spent the evening with the journalist trying to find a beer. We were in a small bar, in the heart of a remote village in France, where the owner only served beer in small glasses, even though we asked for a pint. It was epic!”
The next day, Damon was no more impressed with the school than with the estaminet. “They taught us how to shift gears, how to brake, how to slalom between cones, that sort of thing that quickly bored me. And then, finally, we got to the point where we could do laps. That’s when everything changed. It was those same tricks we were being judged on.”
While the future Formula 1 world champion returned to the UK delighted with his experience, it wasn’t a revelation either. “I’d had a good time, but I hadn’t fallen in love with motorsport. So it came as no great surprise to find myself qualified for the finals. For me, it was more of a publicity stunt for the school.”
No matter, he went, but this time with a completely different ambition. “If they wanted me to come back, they’d go and see. This time, as I was competitive by nature, I wanted to win. I arrived with a different determination, but I did too much. I pushed too hard. Losing upsets me, but it started to itch. I wondered if I shouldn’t give it a try after all. This failure was probably the best thing that could have happened to me.”
The switch from motorcycles to cars was made easier by John Webb, head of Brand Hatch, who offered him a helping hand. “I was naive”, he says, ”and I used to devour Autosport magazine to try and understand this world, which was totally foreign to me despite my parentage. When I started racing, I was at ground zero.”
Nevertheless, the story was underway. “Winfield,” he concludes, ”gave me a taste for cars!’
Photo credits: Bernard Asset
