Decorated Soldier
Hill, 1997-'98 Valvoline/ASE Mechanic of the Year, joined Target/Chip Ganassi after spending the 1995 season with Rahal-Hogan Racing as Raul Boesel's chief mechanic.
In addition to his Valvoline/ASE awards, Hill has also received the Snap-On Top Wrench Award twice, and he was elected to the Championship Association of Mechanics All-Star Team in 1997. The previous year, he received racing's Jim McGee Award for his work behind the wall.
As chief mechanic, Hill is responsible for Montoya's cars and for a myriad of other details that go into the making of a top-notch racing team.
"I oversee the preparation and build of the cars," Hill explains. "I make sure the driver is comfortable and that he has everything he needs, and I make sure the guys have all the parts they need as well."
The "guys" in this case are Hill's staff of mechanics and support crew. "I have five chassis mechanics, a gearbox guy, a shock [absorber] guy, two truck drivers, an electronics guy, and three subassembly guys," he says. Hill himself reports to Target/Ganassi team manager Mike Hull, and the team employs more than 80 people at its Indianapolis shop, including 35 to 40 mechanics.
Hill has always been interested in racing and speed. However, he turned to working on race cars after wrecking several go-carts and thus concluding that, at his skill level, racing could become an expensive proposition.
The 38-year-old Hill was born in New South Wales, Australia, to Scottish parents. "My father was down there on business. I lived there for two years, and then my parents moved back to England," he says.
Hill's parents settled in Woking, Surrey, about 30 miles south of London. He finished school at 15, and then entered a technical college. As with similar programs in this country, the school's curriculum called for a combination of classroom instruction and on-the-job training.
"I've always been mechanically inclined," Hill says. "I took an apprenticeship in England, but I didn't like working on street cars that much; so I went to work for Ralt, building chassis on the assembly side." Hill worked for Ralt for a year arid a half, with his career as a racing mechanic beginning in earnest in 1978 when he was recruited by a racing team to serve as a mechanic.
"For the season, the smaller teams in Europe will come to the factories and try to recruit mechanics that have been building the cars and take them on the road," Hill says. Many teams follow this strategy because they are not large enough to employ mechanics year-round, he adds.
Hill immigrated to the U.S. in 1985 to work on Jeff Andretti 's Super Vee race car. "I had the opportunity to go to Japan or to come to America," Hill says. "I thought, 'Well, Southern California, that sounds pretty nice.’ So I came here, and I've been here ever since."
From Super Vee, Hill moved to Indy Lights with Andretti and then, eventually, to Pat Patrick's lndyCar team, where he served as the mechanic for Danny Sullivan. When Rahal took over Pat Patrick's operation in 1992, Hill stayed with Rahal until his move to his present employer at the end of 1995, when he became Alex Zanardi's chief mechanic.
For Hill, a chief mechanic's ability to communicate and listen are assets as important as his racing knowledge and mechanical skill. "As large as our team is today, communication is a big thing," Hill says. "We really have to communicate. I spend a lot of time in meetings just being kept up to speed about what other people are doing."
Weekend Chores
A typical race weekend for Hill begins on Thursday, when the team arrives at the track to set up the car and go through tech inspection. Friday is a little more intense, as it is the first day of practice and qualifying, Hill says, and by the time Saturday rolls around with its second day of qualifying, the atmosphere is charged. On Sunday, race day, "You go through the motions and do the best that you can," Hill says.
"Success for me on a weekend is having the car finish in the best position it can finish in," he adds. "Obviously, we can't win every race. But if my guys and myself put 110 percent into it all weekend long, from prepping the car on Thursday to the pit stops during the race, and we end up finishing the race in fifth place–and Juan drove 110 percent–then that's success.
"I'd like to measure success by results, but you can't always get results in motor racing, because you don't know what's going to happen. There are too many variables. So as long as everybody's giving 110 percent, I like to think of that as a successful weekend."
One thing Hill enjoys about racing is the clear feedback–and the opportunity to try again if the race was less than successful. "It's a nearly instantaneous reward," he explains. "If you do have a failure on a Sunday, you've just got to shrug your shoulders and head off to the next one, because it's a week away, and you can try to redeem yourself there."
Back home at the team's headquarters in Indianapolis, a typical day for Hill begins before eight o'clock. “I’m always here before eight, and l don't think I’ve ever left before six. I could stay here until two o'clock in the morning, depending on the different projects I have going on," he says.
The shop itself includes five race car bays in the main facility, a large fabrication and machine shop, a paint shop and two truck bays large enough to house the team's 18-wheelers. "We can park two semis in the truck bay area," says Hill. "We can back them in, so we don't have to load the cars in the rain or anything."
During the season, the team normally takes a day off on Monday, with everyone returning to work on Tuesday. "We strip all the cars that have run, clean everything, Magnaflux it, Zyglo it, send the engine back and get another one, and pretty much overhaul the cars from top to bottom and get ready for the next race," Hill says.
Because of his job, Hill spends a lot of time away from home. "You've got to give 100 percent all the time," he says. "I've gone for nearly two and one half months before without seeing my wife, just because we've been on the road. So the job requires a lot of dedication."
Hill and his wife, Casey, live in Indianapolis, where she is a recruiter for a head hunting firm. Although she attends races when she can, the nature of a professional racing series such as CART means that she misses more events than she attends, Hill says. "It's pretty hard to have a regular Monday-to-Friday job and get to a lot of races," he adds.
For a young man or woman thinking about becoming a race mechanic, Hill offers this advice: "Think about it long and hard, because it requires an awful lot of time and dedication."
For those who are serious about becoming a race mechanic and are willing to make the sacrifices, Hill advises that they read magazines such as Champ Car, Racer, On Track, and lndyCar, send resumes out, and pound on doors.
For Hill, two important attributes in any aspiring mechanic are ambition and dedication, followed closely by an even temperament and an ability to get along with people. "We spend a lot of time on the road," he says. "We eat and sleep and live together, and we have to be able to get along with one another."
For those who get their foot in the door, it's not an immediate step from the street to the pit wall, Hill observes, especially if they arrive without extensive experience.
"We start them out building up brakes or something like that, or assembling wings, which is a real basic kind of work," he says. "We monitor them and watch them and see how they do, and if they’re good, we move them up. They'll become a floating mechanic and work directly underneath one of the race car mechanics for a while. We feed them into the system that way."
The opportunities are better today than when he began. he adds. "With the IRL and everything else. there are so many teams out there. and it's a lot easier to get into than it used to be."
For himself, it's been a long, interesting journey, one that Hill has no regrets about. "I still say that I've never worked a day in my life, because it's more of a hobby than anything else." he says. "I just love what I do."
Our thanks to Parts & People, an automotive industry publication, for their help with this story.
