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1996: Schumacher's first Ferrari win

Appalling weather swiftly cut into the pack at Barcelona. Six of the 20 cars were gone within a lap, and at the finish only half a dozen were still rolling. As a race, therefore, the Spanish Grand Prix was less than memorable, and for some drivers, notably Damon Hill, it was better forgotten. The World Championship leader started from the pole, but retired on lap 11, after going off the road a third time

In the torrential rain Hill's Williams-Renault team mate Jacques Villeneuve took the lead at the start, and for several laps rejected the attentions of Jean Alesi. Both, however, were swiftly overwhelmed by Michael Schumacher, who had made a disastrous start, but soon settled into a pace utterly beyond any of his rivals. The Ferrari may not have much pleased Michael in dry qualifying, but in the wet he found the car near perfect.

Once into the lead, Schumacher pulled away at the rate of four seconds a lap. 'He just left me standing,' Villeneuve shrugged afterwards. It was, in truth, one of the great wet weather drives in history, worthy of comparison with Ayrton Senna's performances at Estoril in 1985 or Donington in 1993. So mesmeric, in fact, you forgot it was supposed to be a race.

After traditional Spanish early summer weather for practice and qualifying, the rain battered down from early on Sunday morning, and two days of hard work, of conserving tyres, perfecting set-ups (or not), were shot to hell. The track was soaking when they came out for the warm-up.

Hill and Schumacher set the fastest times, which was hardly a surprise, but Olivier Panis, winner at Monte Carlo in the rain, was third fastest with the Ligier-Mugen Honda, ahead of Alesi's Benetton-Renault, Eddie Irvine's Ferrari and Heinz-Harald Frentzen's Sauber-Ford. The last-named, in fact, caused the session to be cut short, when he had a sizeable accident out of the last corner.

Fortunately, the Sauber spun into the tyre wall backwards, but the impact was nevertheless considerable, and three corners were torn off. Frentzen looked pale and shaken as he walked away, but a medical check revealed nothing awry, and he was passed fit to race.

Villeneuve took the warm-up very easily, but certainly got to it when the race began. 'My start went very well, and I was happy with that - it seemed like Damon just didn't go anywhere. Of course it's always good to get the lead at the start of a wet race, because at least you see something - the guys behind don't!'

Hill indeed hesitated when the lights went out, trailing Villeneuve and Alesi into the first turn, but his getaway was scintillating compared with Schumacher's. The Ferrari appeared almost to stall, before stumbling away.

'My start was a disaster,' Michael said. 'I went for the clutch, and there was nothing. I nearly stalled, then tried it again - I just had an on/off clutch, for some reason. We've had problems with it before, and thought we were on top of it, but obviously we're not.

'Fortunately, no one went into the back of me, but I don't know how many positions I lost - even Diniz passed me, I think. Now I know how it is to start a wet race from the back: you just can't see anything. I really was afraid I'd go into someone. The next lap I saw cars stopped all over the circuit, so I was lucky that none of them had gone off in front of me.'

Although back in sixth at the end of the first lap, Schumacher had already overtaken three or four cars. On the second lap he was up to fifth, team mate Irvine having spun into retirement, and on the fourth he moved to fourth, courtesy of Damon Hill, who had made the first of his mistakes. Next, Michael dealt with Berger, before quickly closing on Alesi.

In a single lap, the Ferrari took nearly four seconds from the Benetton, and it was obviously only a matter of time before Schumacher was up to second, up to first, away into the far yonder.

For now, though, it remained Villeneuve from Alesi, and neither was without his problems. 'I was on the limit,' said Jean, 'and because the ride height of my car was a little bit too low, I was aquaplaning badly everywhere. With these cars, you know, you aquaplane not only with the tyres, but also with the flat bottom of the car. Also, my speed on the straight was terrible whenever I got right behind Jacques, because a lot of water was going into the airbox. Like that, I was only able to get 14,000 revs...'

As for Jacques, he found that his tyres began to go off markedly after only 10 laps. Even had they not, though, there was no way he could have resisted Schumacher. On lap nine, Michael was past Alesi, into second, and on lap 12 he overtook Villeneuve, too, at precisely the same place, into a tight left-hander. On each occasion, he left his braking late, poked the nose of the Ferrari inside, leaving neither Jean nor Jacques an opportunity to resist. The moves were exquisitely judged, and now all Schumacher had to do was keep his concentration alive for another 53 laps. It was going to be a long day, not least for the spectators.

'I had no chance to follow Michael,' Alesi ruefully admitted. 'Where was Michael's advantage?' smiled Villeneuve. 'Everywhere! He was much quicker in the corners, and that's all there was to it. As long as he was behind me, he couldn't see as well, but once he got in front, he just left me standing.'

Thus, the situation at the front appeared settled only a dozen laps into the race. Behind the leaders, little scraps were going on, and in the paddock many drivers were already in civvies, their Spanish Grand Prix already done. Foremost among these was Hill, who had gone off the road on laps four, eight and, finally, 11.

The last of these adventures had occurred out of the last corner, Damon spinning across the road, as Frentzen had done in the warm-up, but this time fortunately the impact vas small, the front of the car grazing down the pit wall.

'I made three mistakes,' said Hill, and I had the wrong set-up on the car. What happened today was really town to me.' Damon had opted for compromise' settings, gambling on a dry track later in the race, which seemed curious, to say the least, given the meteorological forecasts. He was not, however, the only front runner to make this choice: both the Benettons were similarly set up.

'Obviously, it's a bad day for the championship, as far as I'm concerned,' Hill said. I made a bad start, but normally I reckon I'm as good as anyone in the wet. The biggest problem was visibility. On the first lap there were cars left and right of me, and I couldn't see them until I was on top of them. As for the road ahead, you couldn't see that at all. I actually felt that the race should have been started behind the pace car, but I don't know what the other drivers wanted.'

Schumacher, for one, agreed with Hill. 'That's what the pace car's here for, and I can't understand why it wasn't used.' Certainly, had it been employed, there might have more for the few spectators to watch, but the powers-that-be had decreed otherwise, and that was that.

Others unemployed early this day included David Coulthard, who went out on the first lap after contact with he knew not whom. 'I just couldn't see anything at the start, so I pulled to the inside to watch the white line, in order to see the track. The next thing I knew was that my right front corner had gone - I've no idea who I hit, because I couldn't see him, anyway...'

McLaren, after the recent spell of good performances, were nowhere in Barcelona, wet or dry. Mika Hakkinen ultimately finished fifth, but way off the pace, lapped. His car, he said with some tact, had been 'very difficult to handle'.

Two weeks ago, at Monaco, to Giancarlo Minardi's consummate disappointment, his two drivers contrived to collect each other on the opening lap; on Sunday it happened again, Giancarlo Fisichella running blindly into the back of Pedro Lamy. 'Bad luck - and an excess of enthusiasm - have spoiled another race that could have been favourable to us,' the boss growled.

The Minardi boys, though, were bit players at Barcelona - as indeed, relatively, were all the drivers save Schumacher. Once Michael had got into the lead, the rate at which he went away was simply stupefying. Usually lapping four clear seconds faster even than second man Villeneuve, he increased his lead from two to 34 seconds in a matter of 10 laps.

Moreover, there was not the hint of a mistake. Sometimes the tail of the Ferrari would kick out into a glorious powerslide, but one had the impression that Michael was doing this almost for fun, as if trying to give the spectators something to keep them - and himself - amused. It was not quite so, of course, for Schumacher is way too intelligent to put a race victory at unnecessary risk. More to the point was that, by continuing to drive hard, he was keeping his ferocious concentration level topped up.

The car, unquestionably, was working with him. 'After qualifying,' he said afterwards, 'we were nowhere, in comparison with Williams. In Brazil and Monaco the car didn't feel good in the wet, so I wasn't expecting anything from today, when I woke up and saw the rain. But in the warm-up the car was handling well, which really surprised me, and in the race I pushed it, and the car was superb, especially at the beginning.'

Yes, but why was he so much quicker than everyone else? 'I've no explanation for it,' he replied, a touch modestly, one thought. 'Our car seems to be very sensitive to certain weather conditions, and today it was handling well. We made some final changes after the warm-up, which suited the car even more, and our strategy - two stops - was perfect.'

The stops came on laps 24 and 42, and both were perfectly carried out. Given his advantage, of course, there was no question of Schumacher losing the lead on either occasion, and he simply drove on through the murk and gloom, circulating at a speed beyond the dreams of any rival.

It was noticeable, too, that he played with lines far more than anyone else. I tried some different lines, yes, and they paid off very well. There were three or four points on the circuit which were very critical - every time you went over them, you nearly lost the car. There were streams across the track, and their positions changed over the course of the race, so it was necessary to adapt.'

Simple as that.

The rain continued to bounce off the road, and even Alesi, who had not thought a 'pace car' start necessary, believed that the vehicle should have been brought out as the halfway stage approached. It was not, however, to be seen at any stage.

While Schumacher disappeared, Villeneuve continued to run second, with Alesi third, and Berger fourth. Then it was Barrichello, in another fine drive for Jordan-Peugeot, Frentzen, showing remarkably well after his morning accident, Verstappen, Hakkinen and Diniz. And that, long before half-distance, was it.

In the Ferrari pit, they had the simple agony of waiting out time. Quite obviously, Schumacher was beyond threat from anything but the reliability of his car. And on lap 33, as it came by the pits, it sounded rough, the crisp bark of the V10 suddenly flat, as if it had dropped a cylinder.

'From that point on,' Michael said, 'I was on eight or nine cylinders, which wasn't too pleasant. I lost some power, of course, but that wasn't too much of a problem in these conditions. My worry was that I wouldn't finish. I think it must have been an electronics problem, because it cleared up a couple of times, but then it came back for the last 20 laps. In the last part of the race I wasn't even at the rev limit in fifth, let alone using sixth.'

Not much happened on the track from there on in, although there were three significant retirements in the last part of the race. On lap 45 Barrichello made an unscheduled stop, for attention to a slipping clutch, which the engineers were able to fix only temporarily. And at the same time Berger went missing from fourth place.

Gerhard had recently made his one and only pitstop, but the mechanics had been unable to release his left rear wheel, sending him back into the race with only three new tyres. Soon afterwards he spun off.

'It was my mistake, and that was a shame, because the car was very good throughout the race. I was trying to lap Diniz, and I had to do it on the straight because there was no way to stay close behind him in the spray. I tried to show him I was alongside, and he should let me through, but he didn't realise. I left my braking too late, and spun.'

Two laps later, so also did Verstappen. 'I seemed to follow Frentzen for the whole race, and I think maybe I was a bit quicker, if not enough to get by him. Then I went over a puddle, got sideways, and simply lost it...' We were down to six, and those six, mercifully, made it to the finish.

Alesi and Villeneuve each made a single stop, Jean on lap 32, Jacques four laps later, and in the course of the stops the Benetton got ahead of the Williams, where it stayed until the end. 'My first set went off after 10 laps,' Villeneuve said, 'but on the second set the car was very good, and I could catch Jean a bit, but not enough to fight with him.' The Williams trimmed the Benetton's advantage from 10 to two seconds in the closing laps, but Alesi always looked likely to keep ahead.

Three very wet and cold drivers presented themselves at the press conference. 'I was freezing in the car,' said Schumacher, 'and it was so bloody cold on the podium that my teeth were chattering louder than an engine.'

'Four or five times,' Alesi muttered, 'I came so close to putting it into the wall. I think the team made a big mistake, choosing to stop only once, but at least at the stop I was able to get ahead of Jacques - to overtake him in the normal way, on the track, would have been impossible in the conditions today.'

Not for Schumacher, though, who drove as great a race as we have seen from him.

'It was okay for the first few laps,' Villeneuve grinned, 'until Michael got in my mirrors. Then he just flew by me.'



The Williams team re-established its dominance of Fl in qualifying at the Spanish Grand Prix, a crushing performance seeing Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve comfortably monopolising the front row of the grid.
Hill was 0.434s ahead of his team mate and a massive 0.937s faster than Schumacher's Ferrari, which remained Williams's closest rival.

Schumacher had been warning all weekend that Ferrari would not be competitive with Williams at the bumpy Barcelona track, with its long corners which emphasise the difference between cars, but the World Champion had looked a genuine contender for pole position until the Williams drivers truly got into their stride about halfway through Saturday's qualifying session.

Schumacher had been close to the Williams pair all through practice, and set the pace after the first qualifying runs. But his 1m21.587s lap 25 minutes into the session was as quick as he would go, and from then on Hill and Villeneuve just got faster and faster.

The Canadian went top-first with a 1m21.145s, which Hill then displaced with a lm20.895s, and then in the dying minutes of the session, with all three of the top men on the track, a lm20.650s.

Villeneuve improved to a 1m21 084s on the last run, but felt he might have run Hill close for pole position if he had not had to abort his first lap after encountering traffic. And although the Williams drivers were the only ones in the field who could make each set of tyres last long enough to do a second flying lap, Villeneuve s last set had lost enough grip to make a difference.

'It was a close fight,' said a relaxed and happy Hill, who had to try hard to find anything that was worrying him too much. 'Jacques put me under pressure and I never know what to expect from Michael. This is a difficult circuit to set the car up, and tyre wear is quite heavy. I concentrated on getting a good balance, and everything went well.'

Schumacher's body language suggested he was not at all impressed. 'I got the maximum out of the car, but we are not competitive enough,' he grimaced. 'This is a low-grip circuit, and the efficiency and balance of the car are very important - and our balance is not very good at all.'

Schumacher's final chance to get near the Williams drivers was thwarted by Ukyo Katayama's Tyrrell blowing up in front of him on his last lap. The warning signs that Williams, Renault and Hill would be back on top were there in Friday's free practice session when Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello and Olivier Panis had topped the lists, each having put a new set of tyres on. Hill meanwhile, was best of the rest lurking in fourth place, having had a typical trouble-free Friday setting up his car.

Even a Renault engine failure for Villeneuve on Saturday morning and two punctures for Hill failed to disturb the team's equilibrium too much. On Saturday's evidence, the rest still have a lot to do. Sunday, of course, would tell a different story.

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