Damon and the FW18: A 30-year reunion at Goodwood
Thirty years on from his World Championship season, Damon Hill climbed back into the car that carried him to the title - here’s what he told us
Published
17 JUL 2026
Est. reading time
3 min
There's a moment, Damon Hill says, that arrives before the engine fires, before the belts are pulled tight. It’s a moment that arrives through the air.
"You smell it before you get in it," he told us at the Festival of Speed, where the FW18 ran up the hill three decades on from the season that placed it in the history books.
"It's got a perfume-like smell. They used to call it aromatics, the additives they put in fuel."
The fuel isn't quite the same these days, and Hill's nose knows it. "I could tell it's a different fuel, because I remember the smell was slightly different," he laughed. "It's a bit like meeting a girl with a different perfume."
Some things, though, are exactly as he left them. The FW18 remains one of the most complete racing cars Atlassian Williams F1 Team has ever built, with Damon taking eight wins from the 16 rounds in 1996, including nine pole positions.
Turning heads at 30
Still wowing the crowds 30 years later
All these years later, what strikes Damon the most isn't the car, but the crowds that remain around it.
"I think it's just the fact that there is still the enthusiasm for something that happened 30 years ago," he said. "That's an astonishing thing about our sport. Cricket and golf have been going on for hundreds of years, but Formula 1 is 76 years old, and things that happened 30 years ago, the new fans want to learn about. The history of the sport, how we got to where we are now.
"You look at a car from last year and it suddenly looks old and out of date. That's how fast things move. But the cars from a certain era have that unique quality to them, which we can only be in awe of - because the humans drove them.
“The Prosts, the Rosbergs. People can see a picture, but they only get to touch and hear and see the car at something like the Festival of Speed."
1996 revisited:
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If not Goodwood, then where?
Goodwood's famous hill climb is a fitting stage, but we asked Damon: if he could take the FW18 anywhere else for one more run, where would it be?
He barely hesitated: Hockenheim’s old layout.
"I don't know why they got rid of it," he said of the legendary circuit. "You go out of the stadium and accelerate up towards the next chicane, and you're flat out for 20 seconds, then you slam on the brakes from 200 miles an hour.
“It was just a great sensation, going through the forest at 200 miles an hour."
Passing the wheel to James
Damon and James on the Goodwood balcony
Hill wasn't the only one to sample the FW18 over the weekend. Team Principal James Vowles took his turn behind the wheel of the 1996 title-winner, and quickly sought out its most famous driver afterwards.
"James said it was a special car. I want to see if they can persuade the powers that be to copy that kind of style of car, because I think it was beautiful."
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