Phil Hill was a quiet, courteous and cultured man who never received proper credit for winning the 1961 World Championship. Wolfgang von Trips had gone to Monza leading the title chase and was killed early in the race, which left Hill without a rival. America's first F1 World Champion should have then returned the hero to the final round, the US Grand Prix. Having secured both titles, however, Enzo Ferrari withdrew his team from the race, an act of selfishness which characterised the man. America was, after all, Ferrari's main market and the reason why the marque had prospered.

The facts are: there were eight rounds in the World Championship with the five best scores to count. Hill had 29 points to von Trips's 33, so they were not far apart with two races to run. Monza was the only occasion in the 1961 WC when von Trips was the quicker man during practice. Phil must be given some credit for dying in his own bed, after enduring Parkinson's for some years, he was not prone to crashing. He was also very, very quick.

Phil was born in Miami in 1927 and was orphaned at an early age. He was raised by an aunt in Santa Monica, California, and though she did her best, his childhood was not happy. When he was 12, his Aunt bought him an old Ford Model T and the official version is that he drove it around fields, but he told me that he used to drive it everywhere. He said, "Every once in a while a cop would pull me over, a twelve-year-old is not that hard to spot. I'd be given a telling off and promise not to do it again, until the next time...."

He had no particular ambition as a kid, he did not shine in school either, but he enrolled at the University of Southern California to study business administration. That did not last long, he found himself drawn to things mechanical. After flirting with workshops preparing quarter-mile Midgets, he had the odd race, he landed a job with a motor dealer who intended importing Jaguars. Phil was sent to England to do a course on Jaguar maintenance and returned to California with one of the original batch of XK120s, one with an aluminium body which really would do 120 mph.