Damon Hill vs Michael Schumacher: 30 years on Brit lifts lid on infamous F1 title-wrecking crash with ‘ruthless’ rival
DAMON HILL was the ultimate victim of Formula One’s original Dick Dastardly.
Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of the controversial Australian Grand Prix clash with Michael Schumacher which cost Hill the championship by ONE point.
The result meant Schumacher won the title by just one point[/caption]
Hill still laments Schumacher’s sportsmanship 30 years on[/caption]
F 1 icon Schuey came off the track on lap 36, skimming a wall and damaging his Benetton, allowing Hill to catch him in the season’s title-decider in Adelaide.
But the German got back into the race and rammed Hill’s Williams off the track in a spectacular collision.
Schumacher harpooned a tyre wall and was out of the race — but, crucially, Hill’s car was also damaged.
The Brit — son of motorsport legend Graham Hill — had to pull into the pits and a damaged front-suspension wishbone meant he also had to retire and ensured Schumacher held off his challenge to seal the first of his seven titles.
It capped an incredible season in which Hill received DEATH THREATS and had to be SMUGGLED into the German Grand Prix through a forest by POLICE.
Hill, 64, recently compared current world champion Max Verstappen to Wacky Races’ cartoon villain Dick Dastardly after the Dutchman was hit with a combined 20-second penalty for two incidents involving Lando Norris in Mexico last month.
Asked about his experience of Schumacher’s infamous shunt, Hill claimed: “It has become a blemish really on his incredible career.
“What happened in Adelaide was a bit disappointing, the way it ended. Disappointed in him, let’s say. That’s the way he went about things.
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“You look at someone like Roger Federer, who’s had an outstanding career, and there’s not a blemish on it.
“A total sportsman the whole way through.
“Why would you not want that for your legacy?
“And some people just can’t help themselves. They’re just very, very ruthless in competition. And that’s how Michael went about things.
“It’s one I think he knew was perhaps regrettable.”
Hill’s legendary Williams team-mate Ayrton Senna and Simtek rookie Roland Ratzenberger had both been killed at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola earlier that season and there had been a string of serious accidents.
Schuey and his Benetton team emerged as the pacesetters in the face of allegations of cheating, a controversy Senna had stoked before his death.
In the Brazilian’s absence, Hill stepped up and emerged as the main challenger to Schumacher.
Tensions rose when Schumacher was disqualified from second place at July’s British GP for ignoring a black flag that obliged him to pit.
And Hill received a death threat from a Schumacher fan ahead of the German Grand Prix three weeks later.
Hill, now 64, recalled: “A guy had written to the police and said, ‘If Damon Hill qualifies ahead of Michael, I’m going to shoot him’. So we had all this security for the whole weekend.
“I had to be secreted into Hockenheim in the back of a police car. They literally took me through the woods!”
Schumacher’s campaign was disrupted by a ban from two further races and Hill went into the season finale one point behind his rival.
Hill added: “There were questions raised about the way Benetton went racing during the ’94 season.
“Ignoring the black flag at Silverstone and so on. We kind of knew they were a little bit on the edge with regard to how they raced. But I had no inkling that he would be prepared to cut me off like that. That was the next level, really.
“With hindsight you can say this is what we would have expected him to do.
“But at the time we didn’t know that about him. We were still learning.”
At the Monaco Grand Prix in 2010, Hill was acting as a steward when Schumacher was called up and penalised for an overtaking offence — and once again he received death threats from disgruntled German fans.
Hill explained: “The only time I really spoke to Michael about Adelaide was at Monaco and we had to have him up in the office, because he had overtaken Fernando Alonso on the last lap after the safety car came in.
“That’s the last time I spoke to him. I was having to ask him what he thought about what he did, whether it was within the rules. Which is quite ironic!
“And I felt a bit awkward. I knew what would happen if I voted he had broken the rules, everyone would just say it was a vendetta, revenge and so on.
“And sure enough, I got death threats because we took his place away!”
‘I was deeply upset’
Schuey, 55, won seven Formula One crowns, a record he holds jointly with Lewis Hamilton.
Sadly, Hill did not get the chance to make peace with his rival in retirement.
In December 2013, Schumacher suffered a serious head injury while skiing with his son Mick — himself now a racing driver — and has been out of the public eye ever since.
Hill, whose dad Graham died in a plane crash in 1975, added: “I was deeply upset, because to be with your son skiing, you’re out for a lovely day — it’s just horrible what happened. I know what it’s like to lose your dad.
“Michael was astonishingly brilliant and changed the sport because he was unemotional.
“He somehow managed to do things clinically and to break records with apparent disregard for a reason as to why they shouldn’t be broken.
“Alain Prost retired at four. To think in terms of seven titles… to go to six, OK, you’ve done it. Why not seven?
“I found it difficult to know why you’d want to keep bagging them. It seemed an awful lot to me!
“But that’s the difference between someone like Michael and ordinary drivers like me. There’s no barrier to their limits.”
