‘I had to get myself together’ – Hill opens up on ‘psychological battle’ to beat Schumacher

Damon Hill has admitted that his rivalry with Michael Schumacher forced him to address his own weaknesses in a "psychological battle” before he was ready to fight for the 1996 Drivers’ Championship.

The tense relationship between the pair first emerged in 1994, when the title contest came down to the season finale in Australia. They were separated by just one point before they controversially made contact, handing victory in the standings to Schumacher.

They also clashed on multiple occasions the following year at circuits like Silverstone and Monza – both sparring partners received suspended race bans due to their increasingly aggressive on-track incidents.

Schumacher ultimately dominated the 1995 championship with nine Grand Prix wins, leaving Hill eager to take a step back and assess why he continued to lose out to the German.

Speaking on the latest episode of the official F1 podcast, Beyond The Grid, he said: “It's very depressing when you've been beaten and you're not getting the results you want. It can be quite a downer.

“So I was pretty down after ‘95 because I basically had my backside whipped by Schumacher and my nose rubbed in it. And I didn't like it. It was humiliating.

“Over the winter, I knew that I had ‘96 as a great opportunity to maybe win a title. So I had to get myself together. You have to let go of whatever has passed. And of course, hope springs eternal. And if you've got a car that is going to be good and you've got a chance of winning, then that's all we think about.

“You start to think about the future. You start thinking about what's to come. But if you've got a weakness, if you've got a flaw, you need to address that. And so I had to get my head around why I wasn't there.

“I didn't have the right stuff that everyone was talking about. Schumacher had just won a second title and clearly he was something special.

“And I just thought, I don't like that. I don't like the fact that I don't have that special thing. What is that special thing? How do you get it? And can someone like me also have that special thing?”

Although the self-reflection may have been more confronting than Hill expected, his work in the off-season paid off and he went on to win half of the races in 1996, with his Williams team mate Jacques Villeneuve becoming his closest challenger.

Schumacher had moved from Benetton to Ferrari – a team that had not produced a drivers’ champion since Jody Scheckter won the 1979 title – and was prepared to struggle, but still managed to triumph in three rounds.

But the Scuderia’s poor reliability meant that Hill was crowned champion with a total of 97 points – 19 more than Villeneuve, and 38 clear of Schumacher.

“The mental thing was to understand that when you're fighting for a world championship, you are also involved in a political and psychological battle,” he explained. “I made mistakes in ‘95 by getting embroiled in the game of talking about the competition and the battle between me and Michael.

“The press had made great capital out of all of this rivalry, and I'd fallen prey to it. Michael was very good at rubbing my nose in it, you know, and it was damaging to me and also to the way that my team thought of me. Nobody wants to think that their guy's a loser.

“And so, I have to address that. I had to come back in ‘96 with the right attitude and understand that the way I behaved affected the team, and I hadn't really properly appreciated it. And the great drivers understand how to get the team behind you and around them, to help them succeed.”

To listen to this week’s episode of Beyond The Grid, simply hit go on the audio player above or click here to listen via your preferred podcasting platform.

You can also check out a huge selection of previous episodes – spanning every decade of F1 – in our dedicated Beyond The Grid library.

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