Description
Phil Hill (1927-2008) was Ferrari’s 1961 Formula 1 World Champion Driver – and the first, and to date only, American-born sportsman to win world-class motor racing’s premier road racing title. He was also three-time winner of both the Le Mans 24-Hour and the Sebring 12-Hour races, twice-winner of the Buenos Aires and Nürburgring 1000Kms classics, and twice-winner of the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix.
Phil Hill drove not only for Ferrari. He also raced at top international level in Cobra, Ford GT, Chaparral, Porsche, Cooper and Aston Martin cars amongst others. He was a global player, an internationalist who saw his first Formula 1 car at the British Goodwood race circuit as early as 1950
Twelve years later he would himself be Ferrari’s reigning Formula 1 World Champion Driver.
Through all his racing up to 1962 Phil Hill used his favoured Leica cameras “… to show the folks back home” the motor racing scene he so loved in fantastic quality colour.
Built around this very personal and long-private photo collection of mainly Kodachrome motor racing photography – intimate, candid, often exquisitely composed, a superb-quality colour record of a bygone age absolutely brim-full of nostalgia, personality, spectacle and drama.
BOOKSHOP EDITION
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.
