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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDamon Hill has defended Oscar Piastri after recent criticisms by two of his fellow world champions. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDamon Hill has defended Oscar Piastri after recent criticisms by two of his fellow world champions. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Piastri came under scrutiny following the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, where Nico Rosberg and Jacques Villeneuve both questioned his form after a muted run to fifth<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rosberg suggested Piastri\u2019s standing had taken \u201ca bit of a plunge\u201d compared to last season, while Villeneuve claimed \u201cnobody\u2019s talking about him anymore\u201d after the McLaren driver\u2019s momentum stalled across the opening phase of the year.<\/p>\n Hill, however, offered a typically dry response when those comments were put to him by Speedcafe.<\/p>\n \u201cWell what do Jacques and Nico know?\u201d Hill said. \u201cThey\u2019re there to say controversial things, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1996 world champion did add, however, that there was \u201csome truth\u201d to the comments, although he tempered those assertions with his own belief that Piastri was still very much part of the top drivers in F1.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it would have been pretty tough for Oscar to take what happened last year,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t win the title. He had a chance and [Lando] Norris fought back incredibly hard.<\/p>\n \u201cNow it doesn\u2019t look like either of the McLaren drivers have got a title shot this year. So he\u2019s probably lamenting a little bit psychologically.<\/p>\n \u201cA little bit of damage from what happened last year and also facing up to the reality of this year.<\/p>\n \u201cBut he\u2019s a fighter. He\u2019s a winner. We\u2019ve seen him do it. He\u2019s a great racing driver.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019ll be back with a bit of hard work and a bit of support from his countrymen and women.<\/p>\n \u201cSo get behind your guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Hill\u2019s comments come as he prepares to return to Australia later this year for his speaking tour<\/a>, An Evening with Damon Hill \u2013 In Conversation with Tom Clarkson.<\/p>\n The tour will see Hill appear alongside the F1 broadcaster across Australia and New Zealand, giving fans the chance to hear stories from his racing career and ask questions about both his era of the sport and the current F1 landscape.<\/p>\n For Hill, the concept initially came with some hesitation before a successful run in the United Kingdom convinced him there was an appetite for a show built around his experiences in F1.<\/p>\n \u201cActually it\u2019s an Australian company, Fane, who have discovered that talking to us, there\u2019s a huge amount of interest in people talking about their careers,\u201d Hill explained to Speedcafe.<\/p>\n \u201cThey came to me and said how about it? And I said, well what do I want to do that for? You know, to traipse around the whole of England and come up with something to say every night.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I loved it. I thought it was brilliant fun. And the fans seemed to like it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Hill said the show had attracted a broad mix of supporters, from those who followed his career at the time to younger fans who have discovered F1 more recently.<\/p>\n \u201cNormally when a young person comes up and asks for an autograph, they say it\u2019s for their granddad or their mum or something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if one of them comes up and says they are actually a fan of mine, then that\u2019s really a nice surprise. But it does happen.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we get all generations. And of course there\u2019s the purple patch, I call it, of mostly people who were watching when they were eight years old when I was racing and now they\u2019ve grown up.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd they\u2019ve still got that eight-year-old in their eyes. You can see it when they come towards you. They\u2019re bewildered. And it\u2019s funny seeing them kind of lose it when they\u2019re grown men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n The show covers several defining moments of Hill\u2019s career, including his battles with Michael Schumacher, his time as Ayrton Senna\u2019s teammate at Williams and the 1996 championship campaign that made him the first son of a Formula 1 world champion to win the title himself.<\/p>\n Hill said part of the appeal was being able to revisit major moments in his career in a setting that allowed for more context than can often be captured in books or television interviews.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of stuff gets lost in translation,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can write books, which I have done, to try and explain things. But things become mythical. And there is a received wisdom as to what happened.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so when you hear it from a person who was there, and I can guarantee you I don\u2019t ever try and spin anything. It is literally I was there and I\u2019ll tell you what happened and how it was from my angle.\u201d<\/p>\n Hill\u2019s Australian connection is also central to his career story.<\/p>\n He won the final world championship Australian Grand Prix held in Adelaide in 1995, before winning the first race at Albert Park less than four months later in 1996.<\/p>\n Adelaide was also the scene of his infamous collision with Schumacher in the 1994 title decider, which ended Hill\u2019s hopes of taking the championship by a single point.<\/p>\n Reflecting on the move from Adelaide to Melbourne, Hill said the two events had a very different feel.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah I mean it\u2019s extraordinary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin six months it was same country, different cities. And we did have to say goodbye to Adelaide where we\u2019d had a lot of great times.<\/p>\n \u201cThe difference with Adelaide is, and I don\u2019t need to tell you, it\u2019s a smaller city and the whole F1 circus came to town and took over the city.<\/p>\n Damon Hill won the last ever Australian Grand Prix held in Adelaide in 1995. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n \u201cSo everything was about the grand prix when we went there.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when we went to Melbourne, it was a little bit more like, well there\u2019s a good section of life going on that seems to be unaffected by what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we had to work hard to bring people on board. There\u2019s lots of sporting events in Melbourne and we\u2019re in competition with all of them really.<\/p>\n \u201cFormula 1 had to work to get the same effect on a city that we had in Adelaide. It\u2019s grown over time, but it is a case of, you\u2019re conscious that some people just want to get to work in Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n Hill will also use the tour to discuss the current Formula 1 season, which has seen Kimi Antonelli emerge as a major championship force in his second season.<\/p>\n
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