The 1995 European Grand Prix at the modern, and unfortunately emasculated, circuit of Nurburgring turned out to be the best race of the year. Friday and Saturday qualifying left a grid which composed of the top six:

Further down the field, the 1994 British touring car champion Gabriele Tarquini made his 1995 debut for Tyrrell in place of Ukyo Katayama. Katayama was recovering from his violent accident on the first lap at the previous race, the Portuguese Grand Prix.

On the day of the race, the weather played its trump card. Throughout the morning and warm-up session, it rained continuously. This left David Coulthard, who had the quickest time of the warm up, nearly 20 seconds off the time of his Pole lap. Come midday, the rain had eased and, for the first time, the teams were considering the possibility of a dry race. As it turned out, only Ferrari and McLaren actually decided to start the race on slicks, with the rest of the teams electing to start on wets.

Confusion reigned at the start of the race with both Arrows Hart's (driven by Massimilliano Papis and Taki Inoue) stalled at different points. To make matters worse, the marshals tried to remove Papis's car off the grid, then were told to move the car back into position.

Eventually, the green light shined, and with it Heinz-Harald Frentzen was judged to have made a jump start. Frentzen was awarded a 10 second penalty in the pits for this lapse. Hill made a particularly bad start, dropping to 4th position behind Coulthard, Schumacher and Irvine. Hill soon past Irvine, and gradually hauled in Schumacher, who appeared to be stuck behind Coulthard.

The McLarens it seemed had made an awful mistake. In front of the Mercedes Benz brass, Mark Blundell spun of early on and Mika Hakkinen suffered the disgrace of being overtaken for 19th place by Pedro Diniz in the Forti Corse.

Schumacher commented later on his tyre choice for the start of the race: "My car is always on a knife edge. If I had gone out on slicks, for sure I would have spun. There was no reason to take that risk, particularly with the championship undecided."

The time to reconsider strategy was when Alesi, who was on slicks from the start, set the fastest lap. This happened on lap 10 and thus the time was right for the leaders to change tyres. On lap 11 and 12, The top three runners all pitted for slick tyres. Now with Alesi, Coulthard, Schumacher and Hill all on slick tyres, the excitement was beginning. More importantly was that Alesi had claimed the lead. The Ferrari starting strategy looked like it was going to pay off.

On lap 17, controversy reared its ugly head as the two title protagonists had a moment. Under heavy braking for a corner, Hill tried to sneak around the outside of Schumacher. The drivers cut it a little too fine and Hill touched the back of Schumacher. Hill barely managed to save a very sideways FW17B. Both drivers continued, apparently without damage. 3 laps later Schumacher managed to find his way past Coulthard, claiming second place. This is where Schumacher began his epic chase of Jean Alesi.

Comparing the fuel and tyre strategies of the two drivers, Schumacher made three stops (lap 11, 34 and 52) which were all for fuel and tyres. Alesi elected to stop only once on lap 34. So, it was on fading tyres that Alesi fought the amazing battle for the lead over the oncomming World Champion.

Between lap 35-40, Hill was trying every trick in the book to pass Alesi, resulting a couple of near moments which left many gasping. Hill then pitted, putting him back in 4th place.

Now the real race was on. After Schumacher's stop on the 52 lap for new tyres, Schumacher reeled out some extremely quick laps, which eventually netted him fastest lap of the race at 1:21.180. Alesi's previous unchallenged lead was starting to look threatened.

Hill who at this stage was slipping back on the front two decided to step up the pace, with unfortunate results. On lap 58, Hill spun off and hit a tyre wall hard, suffering a slight injury to one of his knees, but was otherwise fine. Schumacher said later, "When I saw Damon in the wall, I knew I had more or less secured the championship. So now I thought, what do I do? Stay in second, or fight for the lead?"

Luckily for us, Schumacher decided the second option was the way to go. Alesi's tyres were some 30 odd laps old by now, with Schumacher only just having stopped for a fresh set. In some ways, Schumacher overtaking Alesi only seemed a matter of time, given the former dominance of the season.

Alesi seemed prepared to fight for the place. And, when the race reached lap 61, Alesi found himself on the grass at the chicane, barely managing to hold on to his lead. 4 laps later is was all but over. Alesi made another mistake, which allowed Schumacher to get right alongside him. Alesi held his position, but it was becoming clear that his challenge was broken. Later that lap, Schumacher came round the outside at the approach to the chicane, then moved across. The choice was for Alesi to give Schumacher room, or have an accident. In a rare moment of wisdom, Alesi realised the corner, and, possibly, that the race was lost. He gave Schumacher room for a pass.

From there, the rest is history. Schumacher sailed on to an epic win, which is considered to be the greatest in his career. Damon Hill, ever the gentleman, showed his appreciation by applauding Schumacher on the cool down lap.