Lost Ferrari rides again

In 1961, Phil Hill was crowned F1 champion at Monza driving the Ferrari 156 – a race in which team-mate Wolfgang von Trips and 14 spectators were killed. Almost 60 years later, Phil’s son Derek Hill takes the wheel of a ‘Sharknose’ to experience what life was like for his father

Ernst Schlogelhofer

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While the British teams gnashed their teeth over the regulation change, Ferrari made hay with Carlo Chiti’s V6 that had evolved out of Formula 2 since 1957. Its spaceframe chassis was conventional, but that striking twin-nostril nose, the neat mid-engine layout and Enzo Ferrari’s unfortunate insistence that all 156s should be broken up once they became obsolete has guaranteed the Sharknose a special place in the illustrious halls of Ferrari F1 history. That my father became America’s first F1 world champion in the car gives me a unique and personal connection to it.

In September 2019, I had a chance to drive Jason Wright’s wonderful replica at Reims and Zandvoort for a documentary I have been making about my father since 2009, a year after his death. The tests and film shoots amounted to the most momentum I’d ever had with the project. I even had a production company and a big distribution company in New York working with me, and I thought it was really going to happen now. Then the pandemic hit and I just put it aside because I had other things that I needed to do.

Phil Hill racing at the 1962 British GP, at Aintree; a poor season for Ferrari

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