(Hill driving his Ferrari to victory in the 1961 Belgian Grand Prix, the season he won the World Championship of Driving).

America's first US-born Formula One world champion, Phil Hill, died August 28th in a Salinas, CA, hospital as a result of respiratory problems complicated by Parkinson's disease. He was 81.

Hill passed on while making one of his many globe-trotting annual pilgrimages from his home of more than 70 years in Santa Monica, CA, this one was to the vintage sports car races  at Laguna Seca Raceway and the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the world’s greatest and most spectacular collector car show, both on California’s Monterey Peninsula. Hill occasionally drove in the vintage car races there and was a much-respected Rolls-Royce and Ferrari judge at the Concours for decades.

Hill won the Formula One title for Ferrari in 1961. Other highlights in his career include winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times, the 12 Hours of Sebring three times, the Argentine 1000 Km three times, the Grand Prix of Italy twice and the Belgian Grand Prix. Hill's 1961 season stands as a monument to racing victories of the kind, for many reasons, we will not see again.

Link to whole story - PHIL HILL, FIRST AMERICAN "WORLD CHAMPION OF DRIVING," 81