Damon Hill almost failed to qualify for his first race as reigning world champion with Arrows in 1997,

and his car was so hopeless it broke down on the formation lap in Australia.

If you told him then, or at any point during the first half of the season,

that he'd be two laps away from a dominant victory with that same car in Hungary, he and everyone else would have laughed in your face.

So how did it happen?

Welcome to the latest episode of Bring Back V10s brought to you by the race, where we celebrate all things loud in one of F1's most popular eras.

I'm Glenn Freeman and with me today are Ed Straw and making his first appearance on Bring Back V10s, Matt Beer.

Gents, welcome, and we hope that listeners, you're enjoying the series.

And if this is your first taste of Bring Back V10s,

then make sure you go back and check out our episodes on

Alan Prost getting fired by

Ferrari and McLaren's disastrous mp418 the car of course that never raced a quick reminder as

well that our series finale will be all about questions and topics you want us to discuss so make

sure you find at we are the race on social media use the hashtag bring back v10s and get your questions and comments in for us and we'll discuss them all in a few weeks time.

Now Matt and Ed, welcome to the show and Matt will start with you with our traditional opening question.

When you think 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix, what's the first thing that pops into your head?

For me, it's the end of the race.

I was probably the only person in the UK not celebrating a Hill win at that point

because it was during my year and a half as a diehard Jack Villeneuve fan

before I realised that might be slightly misguided.

So I was kind of grimacing at the thought of the romantic arrows victory. And so for me, it's Williams bouncing across the grass and taking the lead rather than the thing. I think everyone else remembers. Well, that makes two of us at least then, because there was another Jacques-Duner fan and one that maybe never saw the light. And that would be me. Ed, you're probably rolling your eyes at this conversation. What's your more measured take on Hungary 97? Well, I don't know whether it was measured, but I was very much a Damon Hill fan. I was 17 at the time, so this was before I started work as a motorsport journalist. So it's two things, really. It's that the agony of the kind of slow death of the victory dream over those last few laps, the fact that it wasn't just like the engine went and he stopped, it was just drawn out,

and there was this hope against hope that he might be able to hold onto it.

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