Damon Hill realised he’d become a danger to his ‘fellow drivers’ after one crash in his final season

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Damon Hill says he decided to retire from racing after a dramatic accident at the start of the 1999 European Grand Prix.

Hill, who was driving for Jordan at the time, qualified seventh for the race at the Nurburgring but slowed suddenly on the exit of turn one. A number of drivers took avoiding action but Alexander Wurz made contact with Pedro Diniz as he swerved, flipping the Sauber over.

As he revealed on a recent episode of the Stay On Track podcast, Hill initially feared that the accident had killed Diniz, his teammate at Arrows in 1997, but the Brazilian driver avoided any injuries.

Damon Hill admits he retired because he was worried about hurting other drivers

Hill explained that he had forgotten to disengage a race-start aid, which caused the engine to shut down. He compared the accident to Oliver Bearman’s Japanese GP crash, where the Haas driver lost control after a slow-moving Franco Colapinto caught him out.

Hill, who was 39 years old at the time, decided to retire at the end of the season lest he endanger any other drivers by losing concentration. The Briton had already announced months earlier that he would leave F1, but he stopped racing for good.

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He retired from his final two races in Japan and Malaysia and ultimately finished 12th in the world championship.

“There was some sort of device that we were supposed to turn off, and it controlled the clutch in some way,” he said. “We did it at the start, then you’re supposed to turn it off, otherwise the engine shuts down.

“What happens? I’m going down to turn one, the engine shuts down. Of course, Pedro Diniz was behind me, and this is reminiscent of what happened with Ollie Bearman and Colapinto in Japan.

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“Suddenly I slowed down, and he went over the top of me. I thought I’d killed him. It was horrible. He went upside down.

“At that moment, I decided, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ If I’m going to be making crass mistakes like that, I do not want to hurt fellow drivers.”

Damon Hill didn’t start car racing until he was 26

Hill only started 115 races during his career, which ranks him 65th all-time. That’s fewer than 2019 debutant Alex Albon and only four more than Yuki Tsunoda.

The problem was that he arrived in F1 late: he was 31 years old when he made his debut for Brabham in 1992. Hill, who initially wanted to race motorbikes, didn’t start his single-seater career until he was 26.

Of all the world champions in the last 40 starts, he ranks bottom for race starts. Hill achieved his ultimate goal in 1996, but perhaps he could have won more titles had he been focused on F1 from a young age.