Here are the Formula One World Champions from 1996 to 1997. I’m featuring just two drivers this time to make the text a bit easier to read.
1996 Formula One World Champion
Name: Damon Hill (Damon Graham Devereux Hill), OBE
Nationality: British
Team: Williams
Career Highlights:
Championship Wins: 1
Race Wins: 22
Races: 122, with 115 starts
Podium Finishes: 42
Pole Positions: 20
Fastest Laps Set: 19
Brief Bio:
Born: September 17, 1960
Graham Hill
Damon Hill is the son of the two-time Formula One World Champion Graham Hill. Graham Hill was world champion in 1962 and 1968. In 1975, Damon Hill lost his dad in a horrific plane crash that claimed five other lives. When Graham Hill died, Damon’s family experienced some tough times, particularly after Graham Hill’s entire, uninsured estate was wiped out by the claims of the families of the other five victims.
Damon showed interest in the same line of sports his father loved—motor racing. But unlike other Formula One drivers, Damon had a pretty late start. He entered into motorcycle racing when he was already 23. After some success, he moved on to one-seaters and gradually rose up in ranks in the International Formula 3000 championships. Although Damon was pretty competitive in Formula 3000, he wasn’t able to win any championships.
In 1992, already in his early 30s, Damon became a test driver for the Williams team. Being driver number three when racing in F1 means having way-limited driving action, which is why it’s a good thing Hill found a racing seat in the middle of the 1992 season with the struggling Brabham team. Unfortunately for Damon, Brabham was a sinking ship that was in financial trouble due to lack of sponsorships. The ship sank sometime in 1992, and Damon spent the rest of the season testing for Williams again.
Nigel Mansell, William’s number one guy and the reigning world champion quickly exited Formula One in 1993 to join the North American Cart series, which meant one empty seat and one eager test driver to fill it. Hill ended up with the number “0” car, due to sport technicalities. Since the world champion gets #1 and his partner gets #2, without #1 but with #2, new driver is automatically given the “0” number. Pretty cool, huh?
During this time, his partner was no other than world champion Alain Prost! When Prost said “buh-bye” to Williams and F1 in general in 1994, Hill was joined by another world champion—Ayrton Senna. Ayrton, was William’s number one bet in 1994, but Schumi proved competitive and Senna died tragically before the season’s end. Because he was the most (and the only) experienced driver left in Williams, Hill suddenly found himself thrust into the position of team leader.
To accompany Damon, Williams promoted another test driver to take the #2 seat, David Coulthard—or DC as the media cool cats call him. Later on, Williams would bring back Mansell to share the seat with DC—the team must’ve really been gunning for another championship win during those seasons. Mansell earned 900,000 British Pounds for each of the four races he drove in, while team leader Damon Hill got paid 300,000 Pounds for the entire season. Talk about unfair!
Hill drove exceptionally well in 1994. He was second to Schumacher in points. And when Schumi got banned for two races (for overtaking Hill during a formation lap), and kept getting disqualified—Hill became the race leader. It came to the point where Schumi’s lead was reduced to just a point. Schumi also finished second after Hill during the rain-soaked race in Japan in 1994—after Schumi allegedly implied that Hill who was eight years his senior, wasn’t a world class driver. Now that’s what I call karma.
1994 title went to Schumi of course. So did the 1995. With rookie driver Jacques Villeneuve by his side, Hill dominated the entire season. Unfortunately for Hill, his bad performance the year before made Williams drop him after he won the title. No worries, Arrows picked him up. He also got his second BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, making him one of the only three athletes to have received this award, not once, but twice! That year, the Royal Automobile Club also gave him another prestigious trophy to add to his collection—the Segrave Trophy. So the year didn’t end *that* bad for Hill after all.
1997 Formula One World Champion
Name: Jacques Villeneuve (Jacques Joseph Charles Villeneuve), OQ – Order of Quebec
Nationality: Canadian
Team: Williams
Career Highlights:
Championship Wins: 1
Race Wins: 11
Races: 165, with 164 starts
Podium Finishes: 23
Pole Positions: 13
Fastest Laps Set: 9
Brief Bio:
Born: April 9, 1971
Hometown: Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada
Gilles Villeneuve
Jacques Villeneuve is a Canadian auto racing driver. He is the son of the late Formula One racer, Gilles Villeneuve. Jacques’ father was killed in 1982, while Gilles was on the final qualifying lap for the Belgian Grand Prix that season.
Aside from the 1997 Formula One World Driver’s Championship, Jacques has also won the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and the 1995 CART Championship. He is the third driver to have managed this feat—the other two being Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi.
The year Jacques became the F1 champion, Williams’ lead driver Damon Hill was dropped by the company, pushing Villeneuve to become the new team leader. To replace Hill, Williams hired Heinz-Harald Frentzen as driver number 2. While last year, Villeneuve was in a points-race for first place with his own teammate Damon Hill, this year, Villeneuve was in tough competition against another former F1 champion—Michael Schumacher.
His championship win was decided in the final race in Jerez when Schumi slammed against the side of Villeneuve’s car, damaging the Canadian’s sidepod. But while Schumi was forced to retire the race and was also disqualified for the championship, Villeneuve managed to recover and finish in third place—securing the championship title in the process.
After his win, Jacques’ career in F1 started to decline sharply. In 2006, following an alleged injury in the German Grand Prix on lap 31, Villeneuve was temporarily replaced by Robert Kubica. During the Hungarian Grand Prix, Kubica managed to finish in seventh place, but was later disqualified. The FIA discovered that the Sauber car was too light. A few days after this incident, Villeneuve and BMW Sauber announced that they were parting company, effective immediately.
Villeneuve went on to race in the 2007 Le Mans where his Peugeot team finished in second place. He also raced for NASCAR, SPEEDCAR, and V8 Supercars. He has also released a musical album that unfortunately was poorly received in 2007. And has had some TV adverts and a cameo in Driven, the 2001 Sylvester Stallone movie.
NOTE: Notice how both F1 Champions have F1 dads who both died tragic deaths?
Source: Wikipedia throughout.
