AT&T Williams F1

Damon Hill’s victory in the 1994 Japanese Grand Prix was one of his finest. He beat Michael Schumacher in treacherous conditions to ensure that the fight for the world title went down to the wire in Adelaide a week later. Bob Davis, Hill’s number one mechanic at Suzuka, remembers what happened.

“It was raining very hard on race day,” says Bob. “There were rivers running across the track and the visibility for the drivers was awful. The Safety Car was brought out on the second lap because the conditions had already proved to be too bad for racing; there were a lot of accidents on the opening lap.

“When the race re-started on lap seven, Damon took the lead and drove off into the distance. He did a brilliant job and it was unfortunate for him that the race was stopped after 13 laps when Martin Brundle crashed into some marshals who had been tending to another car.

“One of my most vivid memories of the race is waiting on the grid for the re-start. For some reason, the cars didn’t form up on the proper grid and they were bunched so closely together that we couldn’t jack up Damon’s car. There was a lot of shouting and I remember trying to find our tyre blankets. I could find three, but couldn’t find the fourth in all the mayhem, so I stole it off the Benetton crew looking after Schumacher’s car! They had a massive sense of humour failure about that.

“At the re-start, it was Schumacher’s turn to drive off into the distance. The new race was over 37 laps and Michael had to beat us by a bigger gap than we’d built up during the first race. Damon couldn’t see Michael ahead of him on the track and I don’t even think he could even see his pit board because the conditions were so bad. It became a race against himself in very tricky conditions and he did it. In effect, he won the race by coming second because he still had a three-second buffer to Michael.

“I’ve since heard Damon say that he drove out of his skin that day. It was certainly one of the best races that he ever drove for Williams and I think he earned the respect of Michael that day.”