Norman Graham Hill was born on the 15^th February, 1929 at Hampstead, London. He joined Smiths Instruments at the age of 16 and served a five-year apprenticeship before being called into the Navy at the age of 21. On completion of National Service, he returned to Smiths. During this time he took up rowing (he later adopted the rowing club’s colours for his helmet design) and met his future wife, Bette.

Hill came late to motor racing, in fact he had not even driven a car until he was 24, then, in 1954, he saw  a magazine advertisement for a racing school at Brands Hatch, for five shillings a lap. After four laps he was hooked and as he would later remark "everything changed.”. The school didn’t keep it’s promises but Hill latched on to Don Parker, the most successful 500cc driver of all time, as a mechanic and general assistant. Through Don, Graham was able to make his competition debut at Brands Hatch in a Cooper Mk V.

After one race, he hitched a ride back to London with one of the other entrants, Colin Chapman, to whom he had been introduced by Gordon Jones, and Hill talked himself into a mechanic’s job at Lotus in Hornsey with some competitive driving. After much cajoling he was elevated to full-time driving and in 1958 he made his Formula 1 debut. After limited success and too many mechanical failures for his tastes, Hill left for BRM in 1960.

In 1962 he won his first Formula 1 race at Zandvoort and went on to claim his first World Championship. Two more years at BRM were marked by unreliability, so he returned to Lotus to partner double World Champion Jim Clark. After Clark’s tragic death at Hockenheim, it fell to Graham to pull the team together and he took his second World Championship. During his Formula 1 career he won at Monte Carlo five times earning him the nickname “Mr Monaco” and he became unique in being the only man to win the Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans as well as the Formula 1 Championship. Graham Hill died in November 1975 when his plane crashed in fog, killing him and members of the Embassy Hill Team, including Tony Brise, son of John Brise.