Formula One Career
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! Nationality
| British
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! Active years
| 1958 - 1975
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! Team(s)
| Lotus, BRM, Brabham, Hill
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! Grands Prix
| 179
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! Championships
| 2
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! Wins
| 14
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! Podium finishes
| 36
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! Pole positions
| 13
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! Fastest laps
| 10
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! First Grand Prix
| 1958Monaco Grand Prix
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! First win
| 1962Dutch Grand Prix
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! Last win
| 1969Monaco Grand Prix
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! Last Grand Prix
| 1975Monaco Grand Prix
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After serving in the military, Hill became a mechanic at Smiths Instruments, and then joined Team Lotus as a mechanic in the mid 1950s. At the unusually late age of nearly 30, he started racing, and due to Lotus' presence in Formula One, he quickly got a chance to race there, debuting at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix.
In 1960, Hill joined BRM, and won the world championship with them in 1962. Hill was also part of the so-called 'British invasion' of drivers in the Indianapolis 500 during the mid-1960s, triumphing there in 1966 in a Lola-Ford.
In 1967, back at Lotus, Hill helped developing the Lotus 49 with the new Cosworth-V8 engine. After team mates Jim Clark and Mike Spence were killed in early 1968, Hill led the team, and won his second world championship in 1968. The Lotus had a reputation of being very fragile and dangerous at that time, especially with the new aerodynamic aids which caused similar crashes of Hill and Jochen Rindt at the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix. A crash at the 1969 United States Grand Prix broke his legs and interrupted his career.
At age 41, he did not retire, but tried to race in F1 for several more years, with little success. His last win in Formula One was in the non-championship International Trophy at Silverstone in 1971 with the Brabham BT34 "Lobster claw". Hill was known during the latter part of his career for his wit and endurance. With Henri Pescarolo he won the 197224 Hours of Le Mans for Matra.
After failing to qualify for the 1975 Monaco Grand Prix at the track where he had won 5 times, Hill retired from driving to concentrate on running his team. With sponsorship from Embassy, Hill set up his own racing team, Embassy Hill, in 1973. The team used chassis from Shadow and Lola before introducing its own design in 1975.
Hill married his wife, Bette, in 1955. They had two daughters, Brigitte and Samantha, and a son, Damon who later became Formula One World Champion, the only son of a former champion to do so. Damon also used the helmet design which his father had made famous, with white oars reminding of the London Rowing Club.
Death
In November 1975, Graham was killed when his PiperAztecaeroplane (which he was piloting at the time) crashed in foggy conditions over ArkleyGolf Course in North London. Five members of the Embassy Hill team, including up-and-coming driver Tony Brise, also died in the accident.
Quotation
"I'm an artist, the track is my canvas, and the car is my brush."
Trivia
Hill got irreverently immortalized on a Monty Python episode, in which a Gumby appears asking to "see John the Baptist's impersonation of Graham Hill." The head of St. John the Baptist appears on a silver platter, which runs around the floor making putt-putt noises of a race car engine.
