INTERVIEW: Remembering Damon Hill’s forgotten championship win

It was at Silverstone in 1970 that, aged 10, Hill first discovered motorcycles. A set of brothers saw the young boy looking at their bike and offered him a go.

“I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ and they said, ‘It's a motorbike, you get on, you turn that thing and off it goes’. So that was the lightbulb moment for me, getting on a motorbike.”

That same year marked the arrival of Barry Sheene in Grand Prix racing, a charismatic star who captured a young Hill’s imagination. “He was the boyhood hero when I was growing up. He did the most astonishing things, and he famously broke every bone in his body and somehow that impressed me."

“I didn't want to break every bone in my body, but I just thought if he can do that and carry on, then he's made of stern stuff. He seemed to have an attitude to life which was appealing, and he was not concerned with the petty things that we all get bogged down with.”

Hill was 16 when Sheene won the second of his two World Championships, and four years later he embarked on his own career in the sport, which he funded by working as a labourer and dispatch rider. Entranced by motorcycle racing, Hill was motivated to forge his own path, free from any burdens of family legacy.

“When I was younger,” Hill reflected, “people would say, ‘Are you going to be a racing driver like your dad?’ and I remember thinking I don't want to do what's expected of me, I want to do what I want to do.”

The likelihood is there would never have been an escape from comparison. Before contemplating the defiant outlook of his youth, Hill was first to point out that a love of bikes also runs in the family. “My dad [two-time F1 Champion Graham Hill] rode motorbikes before he drove cars, and his mum, my grandma, she rode motorbikes before the war, after World War I.” Unintentionally, similarities between father and son became even closer.

Hill’s first experience on two-wheels came on trial bikes, which gave him an appreciation of the specific sense of freedom that only a motorcycle can offer.

“I used to have a Bultaco, just mucking about in the mud — which is another thing you can do with motorbikes, you can go over mountains and through streams and generally go anywhere you like. You can wave your legs around. It's difficult when you’re in a car, you just feel very… I mean, I've just come out of my [Williams] FW18, and I love it dearly, but God it's claustrophobic. You are really, truly trussed up inside.”

In his early 20s, ‘Daisy’, as he was nicknamed for his softer background and accent, was a regular feature in motorcycle paddocks during the early 1980s with his bike, a Yamaha TZ350, provided by his employer. He raced in the Yamaha Pro-Am Challenge, a one-make series that ran between 1981 and ‘84.

But his financial limitations meant that he focused mostly on racing at Brands Hatch, and won around 40 races there. In 1984 he was crowned the 350cc clubman’s Champion of Brands, an achievement significant enough for the circuit to recently commemorate as part of its Avenue of Legends.

“I won every single race I entered and I just couldn't believe it, it just was so incredible. Everything clicked and I loved it. That was at the same time I was transferring to cars, so the bike had to stop eventually.”

In fact, by then the transition had already begun, not that Hill was the driving force behind it. His mother had convinced him to take a course at the Winfield Racing School in 1983, which Hill reluctantly attended and only enjoyed once they got to the stage of actually racing. With something at stake, something to prove, Hill’s interest suddenly spiked.

“The thing is, once you've got a competitive streak in you then it doesn't matter whether it's a car or a motorbike or a bicycle, you just want to win.”

Hill took what he described as “a pragmatic decision” to build a career on four wheels, recognising the limited opportunities in the motorcycle world. “I thought ‘Well, maybe I'll have a go at this car thing. Because it did seem that even if you failed to go into F1, you could still probably earn a living driving till you're about 50, doing something."

“MotoGP, that was not my destiny. My destiny ended up being what everyone expected of me. So, once I got into car racing, I just thought ‘I'm gonna prove I can do this’ and I did OK.”

While Hill admits “there’s nothing like Formula 1”, his achievements on a bike are still important to him, if anything as a means of connecting with other riders. “I feel like I get what they're about. But there is a level of skill now that they're indulging in which is just berserk, beyond imagining when I was racing bikes. No one imagined you could get away with the things they can do now on a motorbike so it's astonishing what they do.”

He still enjoys racing a TZ350, as well as a TZ250, though is now separated from the bike on which he became King of Brands — something he compared to Trigger’s Broom; “so many parts have been replaced that I'm not sure anything's original anymore.”

At the Festival of Speed it was hoped that, alongside his exploits as an official ambassador of the Williams Formula 1 team, we’d see Hill take on the Goodwood Hill aboard a 1983 Yamaha RD250LC. Sadly, circumstances prevented such an exhibition materialising, though Hill impressed upon us the importance of these heritage machines, be it cars or bikes, continuing to run.

“[The Festival of Speed] is really this kind of living museum of stuff that would otherwise be stuck in someone's garage. Everybody who races, whether it's NASCAR or drifting or whether they race bikes or F1, they all want to meet the people who do the other thing, and here’s the only place you can do that.”

Speaking of things that you’d only find at Goodwood, one of the more absurd activities Hill got up to during the Festival of Speed weekend involved showcasing his other passion: music. He was invited to play guitar on the roof of Goodwood House during our spectacular launch of the Goodwood Road Racing Club of America. Albeit slightly put off by the fireworks, Hill assured it was a “fun, hilarious” experience. “I'll just put that on my list of crazy things I've done in my life.”

It seems that ‘Damon Hill’ and ‘unexpected’ just go together. From the top of the world at Suzuka via two-wheels at Brands Hatch, nothing about Hill’s journey — however much it was anticipated — was straightforward, and it was a delight to celebrate all stages of it with him at the 2026 Festival of Speed.

Main image photography by Tom Shaxson.

The 2027 Festival of Speed will take place on 15th-18th July 2027, sign up for ticket alerts to make sure you don't miss out. Tickets are available for GRRC Members and Fellows, you can join the Fellowship today.