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Eddie Hill (born March 6, 1936) is an American retired drag racer who won numerous drag racing championships on land and water. Hill had the first run in the four second range (4.990 seconds), which earned him the nickname "Four Father of Drag Racing." His other nicknames include "The Thrill", "Holeshot Hill", and "Fast Eddie". In 1960, he set the NHRA record for the largest improvement in the elapsed time (e.t.) when he drove the quarter mile in 8.84 seconds to break the previous 9.40-second record.
Hill raced at open competitions and Top Fuel events from 1955 until he retired in 1966. After opening a motorcycle shop, he returned several years later to race motorcycles. He started racing drag boats after attending a drag boat event in 1974 and he won championships in all of the major boat drag racing sanctioning bodies. Hill set the lowest wet elapsed time (e.t.) record with a 5.16-second run, which was lower than the land drag racing record of 5.39 seconds. He quit water drag racing after he suffered broken bones at a crash in Arizona and returned to land drag racing in 1985. Initially underfunded and unsuccessful, Hill set the all-time speed record at a National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) event in 1987, becoming the first person to hold both the land and water speed records simultaneously. In 1993, Hill became the NHRA's oldest Top Fuel champion. When Hill retired in 1999, he had won 12 national season point championships on land or water, and had won more than 100 trophies in motorcycles and 86 drag events between his land and water careers.
Hill spent four months designing and seven months building another home-built dragster called the Double Dragon. The machine had two engines, with each engine having its own ring gear and pinion, clutch, and driveshaft. He used four rear racing in open competitions for faster passes, and two rear slicks in match competitions to produce smokier passes. The machine ripped up the starting line at the 1961 NHRA Nationals at Indianapolis. In 1962, Hill ran two years after Chris Karamesines had the first pass and two years before Don Garlits had the first official pass. A speed or e.t. record is first certified official after it is backed up by a different pass within one percent. Hill built his first Top Fuel dragster in 1963 using a Pontiac engine. He had nearly completed a jet-engine powered ultralight dragster in 1963 when the NHRA outlawed all aircraft engines. He built two more Top Fuel Hemi-powered dragsters before he had an engine fire at Green Valley Race City in 1966. "It was one of those fireballs that you couldn't see through," Hill said. "I locked up the brakes, and it felt like I needed to turn the wheel to the left, but for some reason, I didn't. I had to do something that was counterintuitive, and it spooked me." Hill had managed to steer straight down a course that was lined with trees. Hill had been using the Double Dragon to win matches, which were used to finance his Top Fuel dragster. The Double Dragon had been destroyed in a wreck two months before this fire. The fire tapped his finances and his resolve to drag race.
Hill raced an all white supercharger-fuel hydroplane from 1978 to 1984. He won 55 of 103 races during that time. Hill captured four American Drag Boat Association (ADBA) championships and was the SDBA top points earner in five consecutive years. In 1982, his Top Fuel hydroplane went at an NDBA event to set the world's record for a quarter mile water drag at Chowchilla, California. It was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, and it was not broken for 10 years. Hill also set speed records that year in the SDBA (220.76 mph), ADBA (215.82 mph), and International Hot Boat Association (IHBA) (212.78 mph). He became the only racer to hold records in all four associations simultaneously. He won the NDBA Nationals four times including three straight from 1982 until 1984. In 1983 and 1984, Hill won the World Series of Drag Boat Racing championship. The series features two races in each of the four major drag boat racing sanctioning bodies. He won 17 races between 1983 and 1984, and made 29 of 34 final rounds. Before he quit boat drag racing, he had an elapsed time of 5.16 seconds in the wet quarter mile at Firebird Lake in Chandler, Arizona. The e.t. was quicker than Gary Beck's 5.39-second NHRA Top Fuel dragster record, the first time that the water record was lower than the land record. Hill quit boat racing in October 1984 after a crash at 217 miles per hour. "It was a perfect run," Hill recalled. "I started to settle the boat back into the water, and then it took off." His Texas A&M ring was torn off his hand; he suffered seven broken bones, a concussion, & eye injuries. He spent five days in the hospital and was not fully recovered for a year.
Hill won the first of his thirteen NHRA national events when he beat Joe Amato in final of the 1988 Mac Tools Gatornationals. Amato and Hill met in four final rounds that season, with Hill winning three. On April 9, 1988, he set the first four second elapsed time (4.990 seconds) at the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) Texas Nationals in Ennis, TX. Hill made the run on only seven cylinders; the post-run computer readout showed his #7 cylinder failed at launch. Six months later, Hill recorded a 4.936-second e.t. at the NHRA SuperNationals at Houston on October 9, 1988. Hill set the record as the oldest Top Fuel champion when he won the season championship as a 57-year-old. It was his twelfth championship. Hill won a record-tying six of seven national events and 15 events overall. Hill finished in the Top 10 in Top Fuel points for all but one of the years between 1987 and 1995. Between 1994 and 1999, Hill won his final two events in seven finals. When Hill won the 1996 Mile High Nationals, he set the record for the oldest Top Fuel event winner at age 60. He retired in 1999.
Eddie continues to race competitively to this day (May 2022) at age 86 in open wheel racecars at Hallet Motor Racing Circuit in Oklahoma.
"It's so much more satisfying to get this award now than posthumously. This way I'll be able to enjoy it. Honestly, it was a sobering moment when they called and told me I was being inducted along with some of the people I admired most growing up. It gives you reason to pause for a moment and reflect that maybe some good was accomplished along the way."
In 1988, Hill was selected by Car Craft magazine, Hot Rod Magazine, and the International Hot Rod Association as the Person of the Year. Car Craft magazine's readers voted him the Top Fuel Driver of the Year after he won the 1993 championship.
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