Read five extracts from ‘Inside Track: Phil Hill with Doug Nye’, which covers the most important years of Phil Hill’s career with more than 500 high-quality photographs. The Collector’s Edition is available now.
“I can’t over emphasize the impact my first sight of big league European racing had on me. I found the experience tremendous. I walked along the pitlane during practice, taking photographs as usual. The works teams alone left a deep impression…”
“We were on a twisty stretch over the mountains between Puebla and Mexico City. I was running so hard that on one turn I clipped a couple of big white boulders. We shot over a crest and there was a tricky, curling, downhill right-hander – with a lot of spectators hiding amongst the tall trees…”
“Maglioli did the opening stint in our Ferrari, and just after 6 o’clock the first scheduled refuelling stops were due, and I was up on the pit counter ready to take over for my very first works Ferrari drive.”
“The Le Mans disaster was the last nail in the coffin for the November Carrera PanAmericana, which was cancelled. Instead, Luigi Chinetti came up with a deal for a bunch of us to run in the Venezuelan Grand Prix for sports cars, in Caracas, that November…”
“The ‘Monzanapolis 500’ was a speedway race – split into three Heats on safety grounds to avoid tyre bursts – to be run on the speedbowl which had been built at Monza for 1955 and had lain largely unused until 1957…”
About the book
Reviewing the evocative years 1950 to 1962, the single volume Bookshop Edition covers 80 events with some 530 colour photographs, each captioned in Phil’s inimitable style and all beautifully laid out over 488 pages of the finest Italian art paper. The book is hardbound with a cloth case and a printed jacket, and will be delivered in a matching heavyweight slipcase.
The photographs themselves cover many of the most important events in Phil’s long and illustrious racing career, from his early successes in SCCA national races in the United States of America – at such venues as Pebble Beach, Elkhart Lake, Palm Springs, Sebring, Daytona and, of course Watkins Glen – through his breakout years onto the International scene in Europe and South America, to his hugely successful Championship-winning years with Ferrari.
His uniquely insightful coverage includes his three formative drives in the Carrera PanAmericana (1952-54), his early visits to the Le Mans 24-Hour race (which he would ultimately win no fewer than three times with Ferrari) and his subsequent drives in the great 1000Kms and World Championship sports car races on circuits as diverse as Reims-Gueux, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Monza, the Nürburgring, Montlhéry and Daytona, plus of course Sebring and Le Mans.
The Bookshop Edition also covers Phil Hill’s many appearances as a Ferrari Formula 1 works team driver, culminating in his Drivers’ World Championship title in 1961. Completing the story are his many appearance in numerous non-World Championship events, including fabulous photographs from his two capacity-class World Land-Speed Record drives for MG at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1957 and 1959.
Think of the great Formula 1 champions and Jody Scheckter is unlikely to feature. But, writes Matt Bishop, the 1979 title-winner deserves more acclaim for a career in which he was once the best driver, bar none
Opportunities come few and far between in motor sport, so rookies must grab any chance with both hands. From F1 to MotoGP, Linus Lundqvist's IndyCar drive lives among some of the greatest racing debuts in motor sport history
The Hudson Hornet is known for its role in Disney film Cars but the story that inspired it is just as compelling: here's how Herb Thomas raced the legendary car to two NASCAR titles and missed out on a third in controversial circumstances
F1 Retro
Silverstone marked the arrival of Williams as an F1 grand prix winner, writes Mark Hughes. It witnessed dominant victories in the constructor's glory days and, last weekend, it saw a (temporarily) resurgent team celebrating its imminent 800th GP.