Damon Hill joins a list of great racing names when he attempts to clinch the world championship in the last race of the season
MOTOR RACING: Richard Williams
DAMON HILL’s long quest for the Formula One world championship will go down to the wire but at least the odds keep improving. By finishing second to his Williams team-mate and title challenger Jacques Villeneuve in the Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday he ensured that he needs only a single point from the final race of the season, at Suzuka next month.
One point is the margin by which Hill lost the championship to Michael Schumacher at Suzuka two years ago but the omens are better this time, despite failure in Portugal.
Hill’s Williams-Renault led the race for 50 laps, with Villeneuve in close attendance, but slick work by the French-Canadian and his crew enabled him to take the lead during the third round of pit stops. He pulled away from Hill and with 16 laps to go the Englishman was warned of a clutch malfunction by his engineers and slowed up to preserve his second place. Schumacher finished third in his Ferrari, ahead of Jean Alesi’s Benetton-Renault.
By taking the winner’s 10 points to Hill’s six, Villeneuve ensured that he had done just enough to keep the championship alive into the 16th and last round. He needed a four-point differential and he got it with a drive of impressive power and purpose. Now he has cut the margin to nine points, which keeps Hill just within range.
Villeneuve will need not only to win the Japanese Grand Prix but to see Hill finish lower than sixth. If Villeneuve wins and Hill takes the single point available for sixth place, they will be level on 88 points. In that case Hill will take the title by virtue of having won seven races this season to Villeneuve’s five.
The supremacy of the two Williams-Renault cars was clear from start to finish of Sunday’s race, as it has been since Hill began the season with three wins in a row, a sequence eventually broken by Villeneuve’s debut victory. The pair have now won 11 of the season’s 15 races between them, and Estoril saw a fight between equals until the clutch problem slowed the championship leader.
Hill is becoming accustomed to the frustration. “Of course, before the race I couldn’t help but think that I was within an hour and 45 minutes perhaps of becoming world champion. Now I’ll have to wait until Suzuka to find out if it’s going to happen. But I’ve waited all season. Longer than that, actually. So I can bear to wait the last three weeks. I’m looking forward to Suzuka. It should be very exciting.”
Hill joins the list of championship close calls that have gone into the last race of the season
1958: Mike Hawthorn
Hawthorn’s Ferrari had only to finish second behind Stirling Moss’s Vanwall in the Moroccan Grand Prix at Casablanca to make him the first British world champion ahead of his compatriot. In the closing stages of the race his team-mate Phil Hill let him through into second place and he clinched the title by a single point.
1962: Graham Hill
Damon’s father Graham saved the BRM team in 1962, for at the start of the season their owner Sir Alfred Owen had vowed to withdraw from racing unless they won at least two grands prix. Hill obliged by winning the Dutch, German and Italian rounds, and went into the final race of the championship in South Africa having to prevent his arch- rival Jim Clark from winning. Clark dominated from the start with Hill in hot pursuit, but an oil leak caused the Scot’s retirement and let Hill clinch BRM’s sole world championship
1964: John Surtees
This championship came down to a hair- raising three-way battle between Surtees, Graham Hill and Jim Clark going into the final race in Mexico City. Clark again dominated but the Lotus broke down on the final lap. The title fleetingly fell into Hill’s hands, despite damage to the BRM’s exhaust pipes caused when Surtees’s Ferrari team-mate Lorenzo Bandini tried to outbrake Hill into a hairpin and spun the Briton off the circuit, but then Bandini dropped back behind Surtees on the final lap and the former motorcycle champion scrambled home by a point.
1968: Graham Hill
After Jim Clark’s death in a minor-league Formula Two race on the Hockenheim circuit, Graham Hill was left to restore the shattered Lotus team’s morale. He went into the final race in precisely the same mathematical situation as in 1962 and again it was a Scot, Jackie Stewart, who stood to beat him to the title if the Matra driver could win the final race in Mexico City. Still echoing the 1962 story, Stewart led until he was slowed by fuel-feed problems and gradually dropped back out of the points. Hill won the race and the championship.
1976: James Hunt
The most famous finish of all. Niki Lauda looked set to clinch his second consecutive title with a succession of dominant victories in the first half of the season. James Hunt gradually got into his stride with the McLaren, then Lauda suffered horrific burns whn his Ferrari crashed in the German Grand Prix. He was out for only three races but Hunt won all three to inch into contention going into the final race of the year in Japan. Lauda withdrew from the rain-soaked event and Hunt scrambled back to third place after a late puncture, taking the championship by a point.
1986: Alain Prost
Nigel Mansell should have won. Nelson Piquet almost did., but in the end Prost retained his title as the two Williams-Honda drivers dropped the ball in the final race. With 18 laps to go Mansell, running a strong third, had the world championship in his sights but he suffered a spectacular puncture at 200mph on the Adelaide circuit’s Brabham straight. Piquet moved ahead but was called in for a tyre check; that allowed Prost through to win and become the first driver to retain the title since Jack Brabham in 1959 and 1960.
1994: Michael Schumacher
In the wake of Ayrton Senna’s death Damon Hill gradually hauled back up on Schumacher’s tail, though he was helped by the fact that the Bennetton driver was disqualified from two races and suspended from two more. It all came down to the final race in Adelaide, where Hill had to beat Schumacher to secure th title. The contest was finally resolved in the German’s favour after the two men were involved in a controversial collision, allowing Nigel Mansell through to win the race eight years after his own initial title hopes were so spectacularly thwarted.