Noah Cooks F1 – How Graham Hill's Motorsport Legacy Is Inspiring a New Generation

Last year, I received a surprising request for an interview – the surprise was that it was from a 10-year-old boy who wanted to find out more about my father and his legacy.

Noah may have developed his fascination with F1 decades after my father's career, but like a true enthusiast he is just as motivated by its origins and workings as he is its modern-day heroes.

When I had the pleasure of meeting Noah I was struck by how, like my father, he loved the technology of motorsport – the how and the why. Just like Noah, my father as a boy was also fascinated by finding out how things work and why. A fascination that grew and grew when he was given a Meccano set and would save tuppence a week to put down on a part he wanted.

[Image: Noah at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, next to Graham Hill's Lotus 49.]

Noah was a joy to meet and left me truly inspired. If you have time, do watch his interview with me on YouTube – his questions were so evocative of my father's time in F1. Afterwards I reflected on the technical advancements that were being made then and now.

F1 is effectively an active laboratory.

The impulse to innovate and be the best led Colin Chapman to introduce the aluminium monocoque in 1967, which you see in the Lotus 49. It was revolutionary – the first F1 design to use a monocoque and make the engine an active part of the structure of the chassis, resulting in a lighter, more rigid car able to transmit forces and torque more effectively.

Sid Watkins – the Prof, F1's Chief Medical Officer – told me that following Ronnie Peterson's tragic death from a blood clot after an accident, Colin's impulse to innovate led him to design an anti-blood clot device, a little like an umbrella that opened up intravenously to stop the flow of blood clots.

The aluminium monocoque has since been replaced by composite carbon fibre monocoques – essentially survival cells, crash tested to withstand impacts at high speed under phenomenal G-forces. 20G is the regulation for this year's roll hoops. Composite carbon fibre is baked in an autoclave oven at high temperatures and under high pressure – you wouldn't want to bake your apple pie in there!

The engine in the Lotus 49 is the famous Ford Cosworth DFV – double four valve, Ford's first F1 engine, and one of the most successful F1 engines of all time. Built in partnership with young mavericks Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin and their British engineering firm Cosworth, my father secured the DFV's first F1 championship title a year later in 1968.

Continue to Part 2: F1 as a Force for Good →