Hungarian Grand Prix Review
Spa-Francorchamps Liege Belgium
by Max Galvin
England

Well, what was all that about then? Everyone expected the Belgian GP to be Hill v Villeneuve and Schumacher v the rest of the field. This prediction was so far off the mark as to be on a completely different target. No matter, here's the story:

Before the race

For once, there was a new name at the top of the timesheets on Friday, that of Mika Hakkinen. The McLaren-Mercedes combination has been increasingly competitive in the recent races and the Spa circuit suits the Mercedes power and effiecient aerodynamics of the chassis. The team were running new, shrouded front wishbones (similar to Tyrrell's but not as extreme) which were reported to have been worth 4 tenths of a second at a recent Silverstone test. Their form may be decieving, but Monza should be another track that suits them so we will only get a chance to find out when we get to Estoril at the end of September.

Mika may have been good in the free practise sessions, but when it came to qualifying, it was the usual 3 horse race. Hill, Villeneuve and Schumacher traded pole position between themselves, with Villeneuve setting a time 0.4 seconds faster than Hill on his last set of tyres. Hill was just finishing a run as rain started to fall and never got a chance to use his last set of tyres (for some reason the last run is usually his best). The weather at the Belgian circuit is, for some reason, always unpredictable and produces some odd qualifying from time to time (Barrichello's pole in 1994) but this time the front of the grid at least, was pretty much as expected. At the back of the grid, the underpowered Minardi-Ford was hard pushed to qualify anywhere but at the very back. Even though Pedro Lamy's car was over a second behind the Arrows pair in free practice, he was only 5 tenths of a second behind Rosset in qualifying. Giovanni Lavaggi, on the other hand, failed to qualify again and must be wondering if his money was well spent (he probably paid around $500,000 for the last 3 races). On the plus side, a new partnership between Giancarlo Minardi and Flavio Briatore should see the team move forward next season.

Two things that I found interesting in the Williams camp this race were the revelations that the team now uses Indycar style wing adjusters to make downforce changes during a race easy, and the astounding fact that Jacques used Grand Prix 2 (a new Microprose F1 simulator) to learn the circuit, but he only managed to qualify 18th in the game (does that mean I should go to Williams next year?).

The Race

As the lights went out Hill made yet another bad start and lost second place to Schumacher and only just managed to stop Coulthard's McLaren from stealing third into the La Source hairpin. As so often happens these days at the first corner, there was a coming together. This time it was a quick starting Herbert and his team-mate Frentzen who had the accident, collecting Oliver Panis' Ligier-Mugen Honda on the way. After the incident Herbert blamed it on Frentzen saying that he was past his team-mate and that the German stuck his front wheel next to his rear and Herbert couldn't help but drive over it, launching his Sauber-Ford into the air. In the ensuing melee, both Saubers and the Ligier ended up buried in the tyre barrier. A bit closer to the front, Barrichello (Jordan-Peugeot) hit Irvine's Ferrari (possibly as a result of contact from one of the other cars but I can't tell at this time), damaging his (Barrichello) suspension and requiring a long pitstop at the end of the first lap.

While all this was going on, the frontrunners were streaming up the hill out of the Eau Rouge corner that makes this circuit such a popular one with the drivers. As Hill and Coulthard arrived in Kemmel, the McLaren seemed to be moving faster than the Williams and as both cars braked for the Les Combes section, Coulthard drove round the outside of Hill, relegating his former team-mate (and maybe future team-mate according to rumours) to fourth place and putting a dent in the Englishmans title plans.

As the field crossed the line at the end of the first lap the top 6 positions were:
Villeneuve, Schumacher, Coulthard, Hill, Hakkinen, Berger

Villeneuve and Schumacher were running quite close to each other, but Hill seemed unable to get close to the McLaren in front of him or, for that matter, get away from the McLaren behind him. At this point the commentators started to try and explain the form of individual drivers and teams on their pitstop strategy, and in the case of the Murray Walker-Jonathon Palmer combo, were VERY wrong, but more of that where it's appropriate.

Further down the field, Alesi was leading Brundle (great qualifying but poor race), Irvine and a superb Mika Salo. Mika has just signed for Tyrrell for a third season, primarily based, I'm sure, on the current upturn in car performance that the team are experiencing.

This state of affairs continued, with Schumacher and Villeneuve setting fastest laps almost every lap (as you'd expect) so that on lap 10 there was only a second between the top 2, a gap of 5.5 seconds down to Coulthard, a further 2.5 to Hill and then Hakkinen and Berger spaced a second apart, 1 second behind Hill. This intimated that while Schumacher was running with Villeneuve he didn't have the power to pass him and that Hill was, effectively holding up the McLaren and Benetton behind him. It was later revealed that Hill had radioed the pits complaining of extreme understeer in his car (actually his spare car) and it was probably this that caused his apparent lack of pace.

As lap 11 started, Jos Verstappen arrived in the pits reporting a sticking throttle (a problem that has dogged both cars recently as well as the well documented chronic lack of front end grip). The TWR Arrows team quickly set about the Hart engined car, removing the engine cover to try and solve the problem. After a full lap in the pits, Verstappen came out, alledgedly with the problem fixed. This didn't look to be the case however as a lap later, he speared off the track, completely destroying the left hand side of his car. The TV coverage had no pictures of the actual accident but it soon became evident that Jos was not seriously injured, although he was moved from the medical centre at the track to a hospital in Lieges for X-rays to ensure he was OK (from the way he was staggering I'd say he recieved a serious bang on the head).

Due to the position of the crippled Arrows, the safety car was called out to slow the field, which caused 2 events that changed the course of the race. The first of these was that Hill came into the pits then aborted at the last moment, losing several places and any chance he had of finishing on the podium.
Hill said "I got the signal to come in and then when I'd started to enter the pitlane, they sent me the signal to say stay out!"

As the cars completed their first lap behind the pace car, Schumacher and Alesi both dived into the pits with Villeneuve staying out for a further 2 laps before stopping, crucially, reshuffling the order so that Schumacher was ahead.

During the five laps that the pace car was used for, the whole field bar the McLaren pair stopped for fuel and fresh tyres (this discounted Murray and Jonathon's prediction that the McLarens were running so well due to a light fuel load) and so the running order was:
Coulthard, Hakkinen, Schumacher, Villeneuve, Alesi and Salo (6th on merit rather than through retirement)

The McLaren's were of little consequence in the race as they both would have to stop so the real leader was Schumacher, who opened up a 2 second lead over Villeneuve in the first two laps of the restart. Schumacher was clearly being held up by Hakkinen and the Finn was constantly losing ground on his team-mate who was relishing leading a race for the second time this year. Hill, by contrast was back in 11th having disposed of Lamy as quickly as you would expect.

On lap 20, Berger spun on the entry to the Bus stop section, dropping down to last position (the whole field were, remarkably, on the same lap). This promoted Hill to 9th and moved him to within range of Martin Brundle's Jordan. What followed was a typical example of what is wrong with modern F1. Hill was clearly the faster of the two cars and he was able to get close enough to Brundle on the slower parts of the circuit but the nature of Eau Rouge meant that he had to drop back to maintain front end grip (anyone who saw the huge twitch Hill had exiting Eau Rouge can understand what happens if the car understeers in such a fast corner).

On lap 22, Coulthard came into the pits to promote his team-mate into first and drop himself down to 9th. Hakkinen followed on lap 23 (Pedro Diniz also made his exit at this point when he retired into his garage), and dropped down to 5th, his stop almost 2 seconds faster than Coulthard's.

Lap 24 saw Irvine stop for the second (and final) time, leaving the top 6 in the following order:
Schumacher->1.762s->Villeneuve->4.715s->Alesi->13.090s->Salo->3.069s->Hakkinen->0.984s->Hill

(Hill had managed to pass Brundle (finally) at the entrance to Les Combes when he finally managed to get enough of a tow to slingshot past)

On lap 28, Hakkinen managed to get past arch rival Mika Salo (these two are not the best of freinds considering they used to live so close to each other) and was followed by a charging Damon Hill on lap 29. All the time Schumacher was putting in a faultless performance at the front, but never quite managing to extend his lead too far.

Lap 30 saw the thing we'd expected all race long, a Ferrari retirement. Either fortunately or unfortunately (depending on who you wanted to win) it wasn't the #1 car, it was Eddie Irvine. This made 6 (correct me if I'm wrong) races on the trot that Irvine hadn't finished and put paid to Ferrari's claims that the new gearbox was almost bulletproof. The team's sponsor and fuel supplier, Shell, cannot have been happy when the smoking Ferrari drove across a giant Shell logo, creating a pretty amusing picture.

On lap 31 both Schumacher and Alesi pitted for fresh rubber and fuel, creating probably the best piece of tension in the whole race when Villeneuve pitted a lap later (Hill pitted on lap 33).

As the Williams crew beavered away, Schumacher was coming through the Bus Stop and speeding towards the La Source hairpin. The whole world (well the pub at least) held it's breath as Villeneuve managed to get out just in front of the Ferrari and swinging wide in an attempt to stop it getting past. The double World Champion was just too quick and drove by the Williams as it fought to get up to speed.

This left the runners in the following order:
Schumacher, Villeneuve, Hakkinen, Alesi, Hill, Coulthard, Brundle, Berger, Salo, Katayama, Lamy and Rosset

On lap 35, Martin Brundle retired from seventh position for some reason I haven't been able to figure out at this moment. A miserable day for the British contingent was compounded when David Coulthard spun out of 6th place on lap 38. The Scotsman said that after his stop the car had stopped handling properly, making him 2 seconds a lap slower (he attributed this to some kind of breakage when the car was dropped off the jacks). David also said that when he spun the car simply caught him out and he lost control.

From this point to the end of the race we were shown another procession, with the only excitement coming from Gerhard Berger who was clocking fastest laps on almost every lap, bringing the gap to Hill down from around 3 seconds to 0.5 seconds by the end of the race.

Schumacher has finally won a race on equal terms to the Williams pair (I am ignoring what I consider a fluke in the wet at the Spanish GP) and I'll leave the final comment to him:

"What we managed to do was really fantastic. Even though we were not quicker than Williams, we were able to keep at their pace and we won by doing everything right."

How many times have we been able to say that about Ferrari recently?