The Winner Who Walked Away

The race is uneventful. Phil's fears are unfounded as all three conspire to cross the finish line together. When they return to the starting line, the F5000 cars are staggered on the grid. The three retired drivers emerge from their Toyotas and are given a brief cheer, but already the spectators' attention has turned to the sleek racing cars that will reach upwards of 175 mph through the city streets.

Gurney hurries to his F5000 car and crouches down to give his driver, Vern Schuppan, advice. Graham Hill vanishes. Phil Hill begins the long walk back to the paddock area. He is sweating and agitated as he walks, the F5000 cars on his left and the spectators, behind a wire fence, on his right. Occasionally, someone points him out and calls his name; the phrase "world champion" can be heard. Hill is oblivious to all. He is walking very fast and talking. "Well, I'm glad that's over. I wasn't kidding! You could get killed in this type of thing. I remember Mike Hawthorn. He was on his way to an awards dinner and his car hit a tree. He was killed instantly. He had only been retired for a couple of months!"

Hill is walking past car after car on the grid. The drivers, encased in their cockpits, are all perfectly still. Their hands are stretched out before them, gripping tiny steering wheels. They stare ahead, mindless of the mechanics hovering near them.

"It's just like I thought," says Hill. "It's the kind of thing you don't want to do. I could never just race a little. It's like an alcoholic taking one drink. It's possible to rid oneself of the psychopathic aspects of drinking and drink normally again, but it's not worth the chance." Hill's voice is strangely loud now, because suddenly there is silence. The spectators are standing, their attention directed to the start. A man in a powder-blue blazer and white slacks is walking between the race cars toward the first one on the grid, carrying the starting flag.

"It's like when I went to Europe," says Hill, his voice growing still louder. "I had been married only a few months when I went over to be with the guys. I lived a bachelor life again, and when I came back to Alma, all of a sudden I couldn't sleep. I had the shakes, this terrible panic that I was really married and it was all over. Who the hell wants to go 55 mph for the rest of his life?"

Hill is alongside the first car on the grid now but he does not even notice it or its driver, Tony Brise, a 23-year-old Englishman who is the prot�g� of Graham Hill. Two months later Tony Brise will be sitting alongside Graham Hill in his light airplane when it crashes on a golf course outside of London, killing them both.

To those who had never been involved in automobile racing, the death of Graham Hill so soon after his retirement would seem ironic. But it did not seem so to those, like Phil Hill, who had been in racing. It was the kind of death Phil Hill has come to expect, if not accept. "It was terrible weather the night he crashed," says Phil. "He should never have been flying. But that was Graham."

Now Phil Hill is busy with his next step back into automobile racing. He is the co-race director for the U.S. Grand Prix West for Formula I cars being run at Long Beach next Sunday. And he is going to participate in another promotional match race, not in Toyotas with a top speed of 105 mph but in vintage Formula I cars with speeds of over 175 mph. The competition will include such racing retirees as Gurney, Carroll Shelby, Denis Hulme, Jack Brabham, Stirling Moss, Rene Dreyfus and five-time World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio. Phil will drive a red Ferrari Dino Formula I car similar to the one in which he won his 1961 championship. He says of his race, "I just hope those other old-timers have enough respect for the historical value of their machines not to go out and stuff them into a wall."