Phil Hill, a reserved Californian who became a gifted race-car driver and the only American-born driver to win the Formula One international auto-racing championship, died Thursday. He was 81.

Hill died at Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula in Central California of complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to John Lamm, a close friend who is also editor-at-large of Road and Track magazine.

“It’s a sad day,” said Carroll Shelby, a close friend of Hill’s who became a celebrated builder of sports cars after retiring from racing. “Phil was an excellent race-car driver with a unique feel for the car, and his real expertise was in long-distance racing.”

Hill won the Formula One title for Ferrari in 1961. He also was the first American to win the 24-hour endurance sports-car race at Le Mans, France — a race he won two additional times — and he won the Sebring 12-hour race three times, among many other victories.

“Phil set the standard” for other American drivers who competed overseas, such as Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti, the late Shav Glick, longtime Los Angeles Times motor sports writer, said in 2006.

(The Italian-born Andretti, whose family emigrated to the United States when he was a teenager, won the Formula One title in 1978.)

Hill “also was a great representative of the sport,” Glick said, adding that he was “quiet and not given to self-promotion. A very gracious man.”

Shelby, who won Le Mans in 1959, recalled Hill as a man with “multiple talents.”

“Phil tuned pianos, he could take anything apart and put it back together, and he loved opera,” Shelby said.

Gurney, another friend of Hill’s, said Hill “had pride in his accomplishments and abilities, but he didn’t overwhelm you with it. He also loved the history and the allure of the automobile.”

Hill won his Formula One championship at the season’s penultimate race in Monza, Italy, after he had swapped the series lead all year with Ferrari teammate Wolfgang von Trips of Germany.

In the same race, Trips died in a crash that also killed 14 spectators. As a result, Ferrari did not participate in the season’s final race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and Hill was unable to celebrate his championship in his home nation.

Hill, despite driving with safety gear in his race car that paled by today’s standards, never suffered a serious injury. He retired from driving in 1967 at 39.

“I had an amazing amount of luck to race for 22 years and not a drop of blood or a broken bone,” Hill once said. Then he quipped: “Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough.”

But racing was not always easy for Hill. According to Formula One’s Web site, Hill was “profoundly intelligent and deeply sensitive,” a driver “always fearful and throughout his career he struggled to find a balance between the perils and pleasures of his profession.”

At one point in the early 1950s, he stopped racing for 10 months because of stomach ulcers, but he returned and “by the mid-1950s he had become America’s best sports car racer,” the Web site said.

In September 1958, Hill finally got the ride he wanted in a Ferrari Formula One car, which culminated with his world title. The first of Hill’s Le Mans victories also came in 1958, where he co-drove a Ferrari with Olivier Gendebien.

After retiring, Hill focused on his lifelong love of classic automobiles, as well as his collection of player pianos and other antique musical instruments.

He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991.