And Colossally That's History: The Triple Crown champion - Remembering Graham Hill

The Race F1 Podcast

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the latest episode of And Colossally That’s History, Matt Bishop and Richard Williams raise a glass to Graham Hill, killed 50 years ago this week, along with five members of his team, in a light aircraft crash.

Hill was just 46 years old at the time, and he left behind not only a wife and a young family but a sizeable void in the sport of motor racing.

Matt and Richard describe how despite a late start - he didn’t get his driving license until the age of 24! - Hill was able to achieve incredible success at the highest level of racing.

Not only was he able to win two world championship titles in one of F1’s most talent-heavy eras, he remains to this day the only driver to have completed motor racing's fabled 'Triple Crown' by winning the sport’s three most prestigious and historically significant races: The Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Matt and Richard describe how he completed each leg of that significant achievement (five times in the case of Monaco!), while also discussing the many attributes that made him so special both in and out of the cockpit. They also look at which drivers have come closest to emulating Hill’s Triple Crown and ask whether anyone might have a crack at it in the future.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Athletic.
0:09.7	Hello again and welcome to another episode of
0:12.5	And Colossally That's History with me, Richard Williams.
0:16.0	And me, Matt Bishop.
0:17.6	We're on to episode eight of season four now.
0:23.0	And if you're listening to it at the time of its release, this episode coincides with an important milestone, because the 29th of November,
0:30.3	2025, marks the 50th anniversary of Graham Hill's tragic death, along with five other members of his Embassy Hill Racing Team,
0:40.4	including his very talented young teammate Tony Brise in a light aircraft crash.
0:46.9	Hill was just 46 years old at the time, and he left behind not only a wife and a young family,
0:53.4	but a sizable void in the sport of motor racing.
0:56.5	Yes, he did indeed, and it was, well, it was extremely sad, obviously. But, well, he also left
1:04.0	behind an enviable record in motor racing, including in Formula One, two drivers' world championships and 14
1:13.9	world championship level Grand Prix wins, including a then record five at Monaco. Oh, and six
1:22.3	non-champaignship Formula One race wins too. But he also achieved something that to this day is unique to him.
1:29.9	And that's what's going to form the basis of our discussion today.
1:34.0	Yep. And if the two of us were to debate which are the three most legendary races in motor
1:40.2	racing history, we might not come up with the same top three, but we probably both have
1:45.8	the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 hours of Le Mans in our individual top five.
1:53.0	We would indeed. In fact, I think we'd probably have them in our top three, both of us.
1:58.1	Yeah, very likely. Very probable. Yeah. And it was in winning those three races that Graham Hill became the first and, as yet the
2:05.5	only driver in history, to lay claim to having completed motor racing's fabled Triple Crown.
2:12.4	Although there's some controversy around that, which we'll come to later.
	...

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