Portugese Grand Prix Review
by Toby Waller
England

Whichever way the 1996 World Drivers' Championship finally goes, it's receiver will be thanking the smallest of margins. Whether it was Damon Hill's pole - achieved by a mere 0.009s - or Jacques Villeneuve's final pit stop - a mere 0.8s faster than Hill's, but enough to put him in front of the Englishman for the final stint - or even the final margin between the pair in Suzuka in three weeks time, this has probably been the closest championship in years. Whilst 1994's epic contest between Hill and Michael Schumacher also went down to the wire at Adelaide, it was competed by opposing drivers in rival teams. This year's championship has been conducted by two equally matched rivals just yards apart for much of the race weekend in the Williams garage. That closeness was echoed in Estoril today, as the pair cut and thrust their way through the traffic only to finish the final pit stops separated by a scant few yards - unfortunately, for the expectant Britons around the track, in Villeneuve's favour. Whilst Hill played cautious for much of the race, and had to cope with a rapidly deteriorating clutch for the final eight laps, it was Villeneuve's day - the Canadian pulling of one of the moves of the season, passing Michael Schumacher around the outside of the fearsome Parabolica early in the race. Villeneuve's superb victory has given fans around the world, particularly those in Britain and Canada, something to get up for in three weeks time ...

Qualifying

By the end of qualifying on Saturday, the final grid line-up somewhat resembled Noah's Ark, with many of the teams lining up in an orderly two-by-two fashion. Whilst the rest of the field slugged it out, however, the world's eyes followed the most important internal team contest of all - the battle for pole by Williams team-mates and world championship rivals Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve. It was unbelievably close. As Villeneuve crossed the line of his final lap, the Tag Heuer monitors flashed up the difference and the entire paddock and watching world collectively gasped in astonishment - the young Canadian had completed the 2.709 miles of the Estoril circuit a mere 0.009s slower than team-mate Hill. The estimated length value of that distance is around two foot - just over the width of a tyre. Hill admitted that watching Villeneuve's lap had been somewhat tense: "It was so close it was scary. Even when Jacques was down in fifth, I had no illusion that was where he should be - he proved it later when he got close." In the car, Villeneuve was less aware of how narrowly he had missed pole: "I didn't realise how close it was. Had I known, I would have really thrown myself into it around that last bend."Whilst Hill and Villeneuve had laps remaining in which to settle the score, a brief shower in the dying minutes of qualifying meant that Hill had the all important first spot on the grid for Sunday's race.

There was also an equally important battle for top status at Ferrari. Eddie Irvine, with the benefit of three solid days testing at Fiorano, finally had the opportunity to repeat his debut performance for the team at Melbourne, and out-qualify team-mate Michael Schumacher. For much of the session Irvine was ahead, but Schumacher, adopting Irvine's set-up for once, clawed back the team honours before the end of the session by a mere tenth of a second. All talk after qualifying was about the championship, though - Hill particularly buoyant: "It's going to be a very exciting race, but I've got a good set-up and I am happy with the car." But there was a note of caution from Hill - he might be willing to play safe, settle for second and let the championship sort itself out at Suzuka: "I am quite happy to go to the last race in Japan. If I come second to Jacques, he will still have a hell of a lot of work to do ... he would have to win without me scoring any points." The minds of many turned to the infamous collisions that decided the 1989, 1990 and 1994 championships. Since all Damon Hill had to do was score more points than Jacques Villeneuve, would he, if forced into such a situation, be tempted to use aggressive tactics? "I don't think anyone wants to see that. I want to win the race - that is my goal - but I don't have to finish ahead of Jacques to win the title." As Saturday turned into Sunday, the world waited with baited breath to see if Villeneuve could prolong Hill's agony.

The Grid

1. Damon Hill Williams-Renault 1m20.330s 2. Jacques Villeneuve Williams-Renault 1m20.339s 3. Jean Alesi Benetton-Renault 1m21.088s 4. Michael Schumacher Ferrari 1m21.236s 5. Gerhard Berger Benetton-Renault 1m21.293s 6. Eddie Irvine Ferrari 1m21.362s 7. Mika Hakkinen McLaren-Mercedes 1m21.640s 8. David Coulthard McLaren-Mercedes 1m22.066s 9. Rubens Barrichello Jordan-Peugeot 1m22.205s 10. Martin Brundle Jordan-Peugeot 1m22.324s 11. HH Frentzen Sauber-Ford 1m22.325s 12. Johnny Herbert Sauber-Ford 1m22.655s 13. Mika Salo Tyrrell-Yamaha 1m22.765s 14. Ukyo Katayama Tyrrell-Yamaha 1m23.013s 15. Olivier Panis Ligier-Mugen Honda 1m23.055s 16. Jos Verstappen Footwork-Hart 1m23.531s 17. Riccardo Rosset Footwork-Hart 1m24.230s 18. Pedro Diniz Ligier-Mugen Honda 1m24.293s 19. Pedro Lamy Minardi-Ford 1m24.510s 20. Giovanni Lavaggi Minardi-Ford 1m25.612s All cars within 107% time of 1m25.953s

The Race

After a series of poor starts for Hill, the pressure had somewhat eased with his blinder at Monza. On that occasion, though, Jean Alesi had managed to somehow place his Benetton-Renault in the lead by turn one. That was from sixth on the grid - would he be able to repeat the feat here? Alesi was careful to point out that, despite dearly wanting to win the race, there was a more important agenda just a few feet in front of him: "I want to be careful to make sure I don't affect the world championship." Hill, meanwhile, was considering the points position - a win for Alesi would have important repercussions for the championship: "It helps me if he gets into the lead! I wouldn't be surprised to see him going into the first corner first." What if it was Villeneuve leading at the end of lap one, though: "It's just a question of getting a good start and taking it as it comes, because I'm in a good position - tactically - to wait during the race. There's going to be two or three pit-stops, and every chance to overtake during the stops. There's one less race, so the fact of the matter is that I can finish second here and still have a good chance of winning the championship." For Hill's only remaining rival, Jacques Villeneuve, the importance of a win could not be emphasised enough: "I've got nothing to lose by going for a win, but my chances are slim."

As the lights went out and the field dived into turn one, however, Villeneuve's title aspirations were looking grim. Beaten off the line by Jean Alesi, and passed around the outside of turn one by Michael Schumacher, the young Canadian was fourth after only a few hundred yards. Hill, meanwhile, had got off the line with an ease that suggested a great deal of practise. Once again the Englishman had had to deal with the exuberant Jean Alesi, but this time crowded the Frenchman out by the first bend. With Alesi on a two stop strategy, and Schumacher suffering from rapidly deteriorating tyres, Villeneuve was rapidly beginning to lose ground on his championship rival. By lap sixteen, Hill's lead to Alesi was eleven seconds, with Schumacher and the closely following Villeneuve a few seconds further behind. The Englishman's world championship position looked comfortable: "I was concentrating on pushing as hard as I could without taking any risks, because I knew Jacques was in fourth place and that he'd have a hard job to catch me." The time for pit-stops was fast approaching, though, and with it the uncertainty of changing positions.

Whilst Hill was diving into the pits for his first stop, however, Villeneuve was taking third place from Schumacher in the most masterful of ways. Coming into the flat-out Parabolica, Schumacher un-characteristically stumbled over a backmarker and slowed. On nerve and verve, Villeneuve used the advantage of momentum to get alongside the Ferrari on the outside. Coming onto the pit-straight, Villeneuve was leading by a nose but, more importantly in the back-marker's tow - a quick chop across Schumacher, and the place was his. Villeneuve had apparently been pestering his engineer, Jock Clear, all weekend to set his car up oval style for the possibility of overtaking at the Parabolica. The engineer's first joking reaction was to suggest that, if they did, they'd be picking Villeneuve off the barrier by race's end. The last laugh went to Villeneuve, though, and the move - one of the most incredible and audacious of the year, if not all time - probably went a long way to deciding the race: "It was a good battle with Michael [Schumacher] until we came upon some traffic. He was going slowly before the last turn, hoping I would stay behind, but I just got him on the outside. I had nothing to lose - either I beat Damon or I lost the championship right there anyway, so it was worth the risk ... It was actually a lot of fun." Schumacher naturally saw it from a different perspective: "We had a bit of a scary moment, because, as he tried to stay inside as much as possible, he came with two wheels between my front wheel. I didn't have as good a grip through that corner, so I couldn't back off because he would have gone over the front wheel - then he got the slip-stream from the Minardi, and he just went by."

It was still only lap seventeen, though, and the majority of the top runners still hadn't stopped. Villeneuve had quickly opened up a gap to Schumacher, and, when he came in for his first of three stops on lap eighteen, the German dutifully followed him in, several seconds behind. The Ferrari was, as ever, exceptionally hard on tyres, and Schumacher would struggle for the majority of the race with poor grip. Back at the front, meanwhile, and the yet to stop Alesi was having trouble of his own. Despite having already been into the pits, Hill was fast catching the Benetton and, by lap twenty-one, was only five seconds behind. As Alesi pulled into the pits, however - hopping the kerbs in his quest for a rapid entry - Hill was about to come on the battling duo of Riccardo Rosset and Pedro Diniz. The lap spent behind them cost him around five seconds but, more importantly, was probably the catalyst that Villeneuve needed to catch his world championship rival. Now in second, thanks to the move on Schumacher and Alesi's pit stop, Villeneuve started to scythe his way through the traffic where Hill faltered. Within ten laps, the gap was a mere five seconds and the pair came out of their second pit stops even closer. Patrick Head was, as ever, typically brusque after the race: "I haven't had time to talk to him so I don't know what it was. He came across Diniz and lost a huge amount of time. I don't know where it was, but he did a 1m29 when he'd been doing 1m24s so something serious must have happened. I don't know what it was, but that was the sort of problem that allowed Jacques to get close. But, ultimately, he really wasn't fast enough for most of the middle part of the race. He lost quite a bit of time in backmarkers that allowed Jacques to get close to him, and then the small differences with traffic at the last pit stop allowed Jacques to get just that fraction ahead." Hill confirmed the facts of the story after the race: "I lost about five seconds on lap twenty-two which was very, very costly. The only thing I can remember is that I came down to the first corner and two cars pulled out of the pits and were battling and swapping sides of the road. Five seconds is a big chunk to lose."

There were two races by now - the battle for the championship, and the rest of the field. Alesi and Schumacher, both on worn tyres, were sixteen and nineteen seconds respectively behind the leaders, but chasing each other hard. Whilst the gap was just three seconds on lap thirty-nine, the pair arrived in the pits literally together on lap forty-five. The Ferrari crew did the faster work, though, and Schumacher left the pits ahead of Alesi's Benetton. The pair would remain third and fourth for the remainder of the race, but at one point it had been a pretty close contest, as Schumacher admitted after the race: "I touched his back into turn four, I think, while we were together with traffic. He closed the door where I thought there was an opportunity and I couldn't stop early enough." Asked whether some rapid thinking was the cause for his early third pit-stop, Schumacher smiled and denied everything: "We made a rather strange three stop strategy, but it worked out." There was a similar battle in the final laps between the pair's team-mates, Gerhard Berger and Eddie Irvine. For much of the race, Irvine's Ferrari had been leading Berger's Benetton, but on lap sixty-four, whilst lapping Giovanni Lavaggi's Minardi, Berger dived down the inside of Irvine into turn six. The Benetton ran wide, however, and Irvine slipped back through to re-take the fifth place and hold it until the flag. For once, the Irishman's Ferrari made the chequered flag - after his brilliant performance in qualifying, Irvine finally achieved the well deserved points finish that has so long eluded him. For those viewers not interested in the Hill/Villeneuve battle, there was further excitement on lap forty-eight when McLaren team-mates Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard - who had run close together for much of the race - collided at the tight hairpin. Coulthard would complete the race, Hakkinen would not. It was a further sore point in a weekend for McLaren where they knew they would struggle.

In the race for the championship, meanwhile, Villeneuve had closed the gap, and was right behind his Williams team-mate as Hill pulled into the pits for his final stop. Back out again after a rapid 8.8s, Hill tried in vain to post a fast lap and keep the lead during Villeneuve's stop, but a combination of slicker work by the pit crew and a quick entry lap meant that it was the Canadian's Williams leading as the cars started the final twenty laps. Hill was somewhat surprised: "Jacques was flying - he did a good job to move through the traffic after a bad start, but I still thought I could stay ahead of him. I was quite surprised to see him go past me at the pit stop." Villeneuve was slightly more confident that the win would be his: "I knew whereabouts he was, because I'd been following him when he came into the pits. I did a quick lap before coming in to make sure I would get a good lead on him. When I was behind him I was a bit quicker until the last few laps when my tyres were shot. I knew that if we got ahead, then if we didn't make any mistakes, or hit traffic in the wrong place, then we'd finish in front." A moment for Villeneuve whilst lapping the battling duo of Johnny Herbert and Martin Brundle offered Hill a brief opportunity to pass his rival, but the Englishman was gradually slipping back and would end the race nearly twenty seconds adrift after nursing a rapidly deteriorating gearbox for much of the final stint.

Hill explained how, with eighteen laps of the race still to go, he had been informed by the pits that even his second place was looking shaky: "Three or four laps after my last stop I was very worried, because when the engineer comes on the radio and says 'change the clutch setting', that's very worrying. I'd felt a couple of bad gear shifts - the pits didn't tell me to slow down, but the alarm bells started ringing. You can imagine that I didn't want a mechanical failure on the car at that stage of the race. I held my breath and made sure the car got to the finish." Despite the risks inherent with taking the championship to the final round, Hill appeared unperturbed: "Of course, before the race I couldn't help but think I was within an hour and forty-five minutes of being world champion. The crucial thing was to make sure that, if Jacques won, I finished second - I've done that. He has now, statistically, a very tall order to win the championship in Suzuka. I've waited all season - longer than that actually - so I can bear to wait the last three weeks." Villeneuve still has a chance, however slim, to wrest the title away from him, and was in typically determined mood: "It's going to be a good battle, although Damon is looking very good to win the championship. But I'm not going to lie down until it's all over. I'll fight until the last lap because you never know what's going to happen. I shall go out to try and win, and then see what Damon does." In three weeks time the whole motor-racing world will indeed see if Damon Hill can do it. Will that elusive world title be his, or will the incredibly talented rookie Jacques Villeneuve deny him the final chance he will probably ever have. Suzuka will provide the answers ...

Race Results

1. Jacques Villeneuve Williams-Renault 1h44m22.915s 2. Damon Hill Williams-Renault + 19.966s 3. Michael Schumacher Ferrari + 53.765s 4. Jean Alesi Benetton-Renault + 55.109s 5. Eddie Irvine Ferrari + 1m27.389s 6. Gerhard Berger Benetton-Renault + 1m33.141s 7. HH Frentzen Sauber-Ford + one lap 8. Johnny Herbert Sauber-Ford + one lap 9. Martin Brundle Jordan-Peugeot + one lap 10. Olivier Panis Ligier-Mugen Honda + one lap 11. Mika Salo Tyrrell-Yamaha + one lap 12. Ukyo Katayama Tyrrell-Yamaha + two laps 13. David Coulthard McLaren-Mercedes + two laps 14. Riccardo Rosset Footwork-Hart + three laps 15. Giovanni Lavaggi Minardi-Ford + five laps 16. Pedro Lamy Minardi-Ford + five laps DNF Mika Hakkinen McLaren-Mercedes lap 52 DNF Jos Verstappen Footwork-Hart lap 47 DNF Pedro Diniz Ligier-Mugen Honda lap 46 DNF Rubens Barrichello Jordan-Peugeot lap 41 Fastest Lap: lap 37 Jacques Villeneuve Williams-Renault 1m22.873

Championship Standings

DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP 1 D.Hill 87 2 J.Villeneuve 78 3 M.Schumacher 53 4 J.Alesi 47 5 M.Hakkinen 27 6 D.Coulthard 18 G.Berger 18 8 R.Barrichello 14 9 O.Panis 13 10 E.Irvine 11 11 M.Brundle 6 H.Frentzen 6 13 M.Salo 5 14 J.Herbert 4 15 P.Diniz 2 16 J.Verstappen 1

CONSTRUCTORS CHAMPIONSHIP 1 Williams-Renault 165 2 Benetton-Renault 65 3 Ferrari 64 4 McLaren-Mercedes 45 5 Jordan-Peugeot 20 6 Ligier-Mugen Honda 15 7 Sauber-Ford 10 8 Tyrrell-Yamaha 5 9 Footwork-Hart 1