MPH: Mark Hughes on...

With Phil Hill's death two weeks ago, motor racing lost one of its most intelligent analysts. Very few people fully 'get' the many-faceted nature of the sport, understand the importance of the psychology, the engineering, the physics, the gladiatorial combat, the human relations, the competitive drive, the romance and the nuances of mood and feel that combine whenever a motor race is held.

Hill did so. Even more so once he'd retired from the cockpit. A lot of people, fans and participants alike, 'get' only one or two elements and therefore miss out on a whole chunk of the majesty of this sport. Hill, a former adrenaline junkie, a fine mind, a free spirit, an engineering buff, a physically and mentally sensitive soul and a huge car enthusiast, understood all this perhaps better than any other successful driver.

The human toll

Talking to him a few years ago, he gave a great insight into the conflicts within him during his 1961 world title season; not just the obvious emotional conflict of clinching the crown as his teammate and championship rival Wolfgang von Trips was killed, but also that of getting the right F1 car just as his own competitive juices were beginning to dry up. Altogether, his concerns for himself and von Trips gave Phil an uncomfortable season.

"In my early days of racing I think I may have been playing the bravado game of 'let's see if I can't get myself killed', you know, proving something to myself, foolishly trying to impress - although I'd have gone crazy with you if you'd suggested it to me at the time.

"But that was knocked out of me pretty quick by the human toll. More and more guys were getting killed around me. At first you rationalise to yourself why it was him and not you, the things that he did that you wouldn't do. But then another would be killed and that didn't apply to him. So you had to keep rewriting the script in your head as to why it wasn't you.

"But eventually - and this point had come to me around '61 - you realise it's nothing more than plain, dumb luck. You start to identify more and more with the guys who've died until, eventually, it's a real struggle to believe it was their inadequacies that were doing them in rather than fate. I feel my peak as a driver was 1960 - I was flying then, but the car wasn't competitive.

"For '61 we got the sharknose and it was the fastest thing around. It was obvious the title would be fought out between us Ferrari guys. For me, it definitely came one year too late because I was, by this time, having real difficulty in giving everything of myself.

"That problem was compounded by Trips - because he hadn't reached that stage yet. He was full of desire. That combined with what I saw as a difficulty he had in accurately drawing the line of where the limit was to make him a worry.

Over his career he was involved in way too many incidents at a time when that was really bad news. There wasn't anything cold or calculated about it; he believed intensely in the honour of the sport and relished the man-to-man challenge. But he worried me because his feel for the limit seemed kinda fuzzy at times.

"In '61, with a good car at last, he seemed so freaked out about the possibility of becoming world champion that he was trying extra hard. He was just way more turned on by it all than I was then, and that was helping him have a real strong season."

An underrated champion

It always seemed to me that Phil Hill was underrated; whenever discussions about least worthy world champions come up, he's invariably proposed as a candidate. Sure, he wasn't as good as Stirling Moss, but at his best he was as good as any of his contemporaries. This was the man who on his first grand prix for Ferrari - only his second grand prix of any sort - was running ahead of his world champion elect teammate Mike Hawthorn and who, indeed, waved Mike through in aid of his title quest.

His speed advantage over von Trips in '61 was pretty resounding, too - five poles for Hill, one for von Trips. But, as explained, by then that competitive intensity was difficult for him to sustain over a race distance. He eventually just plain ran out of competitive desire. To the point where he simply 'forgot' to renew his international competition licence for '68 - surely a sub-conscious act of self-sabotage - and so retired.

Hill was just as eloquent talking about the difference in driving technique between the front and rear-engine F1 cars, or about the engineering strengths and limitations of the 'sharknose' 156 in which he won the title, or about how it 'felt' compared with, say, a Dino 246. He'd talk about the noise of their engines, the feel of the gearshifts. You got the feeling he enjoyed his career a whole lot more once he could look back on it.

Echoes of '61 for Kimi

Now a distant descendant of Hill's in the line of Ferrari aces, Kimi Raikkonen, approaches a critical grand prix in the midst of an apparent motivation crisis while fighting for a world title. Because of the night-and-day difference in safety levels then and now, it's unlikely his desire is being sucked out of him for the same reasons.

But something seems to be going wrong. Are the root reasons psychological or technical? Or based on his relationship with the team? Is the fact that teammate Felipe Massa seems 'way more turned on' as Hill put it, about winning the title a significant factor? Is the team beginning to feel this and subtly changing its focus as a result?

These questions and their answers are a perfect illustration of why the multiple layers of this sport are at the root of its greatness, and why we should always open our minds to all of its facets. Just as Phil Hill always did.