Damon Hill

[Grant Sprague]

I have not had the pleasure to meet Damon but I did meet his dad at the first Long Beach race, late September 1975.
He was there to watch his promising protégé, Tony Brise show his great skills at the Inaugural LBGP in a Theodore Racing Lola F5000.
Tony's only problem that weekend was the failure of drive shafts on the demanding street circuit.
This photo shows Graham Hill studying the first driveshaft that broke in the first practice session. Tony Brise is looking on along with his wife Janet and race mechanic,Julian Randles is on the right.
Only the broken driveshaft was replaced and it was the other one that broke during the race while Tony was leading comfortably.
If only both could have been replaced at the time who knows what the final result would have been.
I was just a 'gofer' thanks to Graham Donaldson for letting me in but later on Sunday after the racing we had loaded the Lola onto the open transporter (Loaned by Lothar Motschenbacher ) and started to make our way away from the circuit. I had leapt onto the back to hold the car and suddenly Graham Hill had joined me and treated me like I knew what I was doing and chatted away about "That Tony is bloody great isn't he ?". He was so full of enthusiasm after what had been a hard year and the future was so promising. I was so thrilled that Graham Hill was just talking to me.
It came as a great shock when my father in-law called me just two months later, November 1975 to inform me that Graham Hill's plane had crashed but there was uncertainty about who else was on board the flight. It was even a greater shock that Tony was also among the victims but relieved that my friend, Graham Donaldson had stayed in London.
Poor Damon was just 15 at the time.


L to R
Tony Brise, Janet Brise, Graham Hill and Julian Randles. Sept. 27th 1975. Long Beach.


(Ken Hyndman photo )

Thank you Ken , I had seen this before but is a really great photo & little story , its interesting how we never forget life time events like this , I was living in queens way London sw1 when they had that plane crash , we were later in a local pub that night & I asked the dj to do a one minute silence for Graham & his team , a sad time ... On a brighter note , you have a great xmas big brother , Grant