On this day 30 years ago, the Formula 1 World Championship was settled in a perhaps anticlimactic fashion, in a final-race decider at Suzuka.
In 1994 and 1995, Michael Schumacher and Benetton had put a stop to the runaway freight train that was the Williams team across much of the last three seasons.
But with the German joining Ferrari, the British outfit had a perfect opportunity to get back to its winning path, and give Damon Hill a coveted first championship, having narrowly lost out to Schumacher in both of those years.
The son of two-time World Champion Graham, Hill was fittingly matched with a new teammate for ’96 – also the son of another F1 legend.
Gilles Villeneuve’s son Jacques joined off the back of a successful IndyCar season, in which he won the title as well as the Indy500, but with a lack of F1 experience, Hill was the early title favourite.
However, the season did not go all Hill’s way, and Villeneuve’s raw speed and guile behind the wheel saw him take the title down to the final round – the Japanese Grand Prix.
Hill botched a chance to seal the title in Italy, two rounds prior, by spinning out in the first few laps. And at the penultimate race in Portugal, Hill was forced to nurse a clutch problem, settling for second behind Villeneuve.
Hill makes lightning start to take the lead
However, Hill still had a nine-point advantage, but nerves continued to jangle as Villeneuve took pole position, with Hill second. It would be laced with a touch more anxiety, as Hill spent much of the season losing the lead due to a series of poor starts.
Come race day, however, Hill, this time, got a lightning start and swept into the lead, with Villeneuve getting off the line appallingly. He dropped down to sixth, with Hill now looking unassailable.
Gerhard Berger nearly put a stop to that, however, as he made an ambitious lunge up the inside of the Williams at the final chicane. Thankfully for Hill, his car was unscathed. Berger’s, however, lost its front wing.
Hill built up a cushion out in front, with Schumacher second. Villeneuve was working his way through the field, with what was now a damage limitation job, as he would still need to win the race and Hill retire to become champion.
All doubt was eradicated on Lap 36, when the Canadian’s right-rear wheel vacated itself from the car, sending him skittling across the gravel and out of the race.
Hill’s title status was confirmed, but with his Williams drive already taken from him and given to Heinz-Harald Frentzen for 1997, he was desperate to end on the highest of all possible notes.
Four year’s previously, Nigel Mansell enraptured a British public with which he was already a star by taking the World Championship, and his retirement from F1 left a gaping hole for the UK’s fandom.
Hill filled that gap impeccably, and his hard luck story of losing to Schumacher two years before confirmed his popularity, and firmly took on the ‘man of the people’ mantle as he crossed the line to win the race, and the World Championship.
In doing so, Hill became the first son of a Formula 1 World Champion to become World Champion himself, and the multiple layers of emotion the moment brought was felt by legendary commentator Murray Walker, who uttered one of the most immortal lines British F1 broadcasting.
“And I’ve got to stop, because I’ve got a lump in my throat.”
At 36 years old and with the most unusual of junior careers, Damon Hill defied all logic to, at last, stand on top of the world.
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