Why Benetton had a point to prove with the B195

Rarely does a championship-winning Formula 1 team begin a new season with a major point to prove, but the middle years of the 1990s were a highly unusual time. The 1994 season was one that all involved would have preferred to forget, what with that hateful weekend at Imola and the long tail of its consequences.

And for the team that had collected the drivers’ championship but not the constructors’ title, victory came with the aftertaste of ashes. Allegations of cheating hung over Benetton like a poisonous miasma, as did the way Michael Schumacher secured the trophy: by barging Damon Hill off the track in an obvious professional foul.

Benetton had been viewed as something of a rogue outsider for years – a perception that intensified when Flavio Briatore, the man responsible for signing off the sometimes scandalous ad campaigns for which the parent company had become known, was installed as commercial director, then rapidly elevated to running the show.

Relatively little-known to the public at first, Briatore entered mainstream consciousness and acquired pantomime villain status through his part in engineering Michael Schumacher’s transfer from Jordan to Benetton in 1991.

1994 should have been a breakthrough year for a team that McLaren boss Ron Dennis had once said would never win a championship. The B194 was fast, albeit more so in the hands of Schumacher than Jos Verstappen, a late call-up to replace the injured JJ Lehto.

But in a season where the banning of electronic systems such as traction control and active suspension had made the cars trickier to drive – particularly the ones with peaky aero originally optimised around active ride – there were well-founded suspicions that the car was illegal.

It’s said that Ayrton Senna, watching trackside after retiring from the Pacific Grand Prix, became convinced he could hear the traction control kicking in; FIA investigators later found the TC software still on Benetton’s laptops, supposedly deactivated but still accessible via a hidden menu.

But in the absence of evidence that the system had been used, the FIA had to let the matter drop – according to the governing body’s president, Max Mosley.

Benetton became ever more Schumacher-centric to avoid losing too much ground to Williams

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Subsequent episodes, such as a pitstop fire at Hockenheim which led to the discovery that a filter had been removed from the fuel rig to speed up the flow, and a ban for Schumacher for excessive underfloor plank wear at Spa, played to the narrative of a team consciously straying beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable.

The presence of Tom Walkinshaw – known for his creative approach to regulatory compliance – as engineering director did nothing to dispel this. In short, probably only twice more in the interim – 2008 and 2021 – has the destination of a world championship proved so divisive.

Those working for Benetton at the time continue to insist that no wrongdoing occurred, and there is compelling evidence to suggest that Benetton wasn’t the only team to remove the filter – and that its ‘mesh’ was too big to have stopped the particle that jammed the nozzle.

Its defence when summoned before the World Motor Sport Council was to be that the FIA’s homologated equipment wasn’t fit for purpose, and to that end it engaged George Carman QC, the silk who famously secured the acquittal of politician Jeremy Thorpe on charges of attempted murder.

Benetton launched into 1995 with a point to prove and a new car with which to make that point. It had a different mode of propulsion, too, since Briatore had identified the relatively underpowered Ford V8 as the weak link of the 1994 package

Mysteriously, the matter was brushed under the carpet at the WMSC: Benetton pivoted to plead guilty but was cleared, and the infraction blamed on ‘a junior employee’ – Simon Morley, the refuelling rig handler.

In 2008 a newspaper report co-authored by a journalist known to be a mouthpiece for F1 ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone claimed that a deal had been engineered behind the scenes to dissuade Mosley from booting Benetton out of the world championship (which would have been costly for F1 in Schumacher’s native Germany, a growing market), and avoid subjecting the fuel rigs to Carman’s potentially excoriating scrutiny.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Benetton launched into 1995 with a point to prove and a new car with which to make that point. It had a different mode of propulsion, too, since Briatore had identified the relatively underpowered Ford V8 as the weak link of the 1994 package and bought another team – Ligier – in order to transfer its Renault engine supply to Benetton.

By persuading Walkinshaw to go in with him on the deal and take over the running of Ligier, Briatore also shook off some (if not all) of the Mosley heat.

Adapting to the new V10 engine from Renault posed the main design challenge

Photo by: James Mann

Led by Ross Brawn, whom Walkinshaw had imported from his Jaguar sportscar project in 1991, Benetton’s engineering department shrugged off the Scot’s departure and knuckled down to the business of sticking it to their critics.

While the B195 was an evolution of the B194 concept, it was an all-new car – it had to be, because a new crash-testing regime had come in along with a raft of other performance-limiting measures in the wake of that tragic Imola weekend.

Some, such as the underfloor plank, shorter diffuser, trimmed front-wing endplates, and slots at the rear of the airbox, had been brought in over the course of 1994 and it had simply been a case of adapting the existing car.

Others, such as larger cockpit openings, the reduction in engine displacement from 3.5 to three litres, a slashing of diffuser width, and raising the height of the floor on each side of the plank, were imposed for the following season but not ratified until September 1994. Controversially, not only was refuelling retained, but the 200-litre minimum tank size was dropped.

As usual with sweeping regulatory changes – especially ones confirmed so late – some teams adapted better than others, and the measures aimed at cutting performance had unforeseen consequences.

When originally introduced, the underfloor plank had only a small effect on lap times. The 1995 regulations extended the plank so it ran from the front wheel centreline to the rear wheel centreline, rather than terminating at the leading edge of the rear wheels.

More significant was the 50mm ‘step’ on each side, beneath the sidepods, which raised the centre of gravity (because the radiators and exhausts, etc, were now higher) and made it more difficult to generate negative pressure below the car.

Twenty-five or so miles south of Benetton’s Enstone factory, at the Williams facility in Grove, Adrian Newey and technical director Patrick Head were arguing over whether a longitudinal rather than transverse gearbox would be the best way to exploit a loophole Newey had identified in the new diffuser rules.

Schuey’s elbows out in his bid to pass Alesi at the Nurburgring

Photo by: Pascal Rondeau - ALLSPORT - Getty Images

Like other tech bosses up and down the paddock, Head thought developing an all-new transmission in the time available would cause reliability problems. He won that argument, but suggested redesigning the existing transverse unit with stepped gears, freeing up space for the diffuser profile Newey envisaged. Even so, it wouldn’t be ready until mid-season.

Benetton’s principal challenge with the B195 was adapting to the different balance conferred by the Renault V10: size, shape, length and centre of gravity all differed from the Cosworth that preceded it.

The power delivery was peakier too, but would that be a problem for Schumacher? Less so than deciding on his future for, even as the B195 was unveiled to the public in February 1995, speculation was mounting that he wanted out at the end of his contract, and suitors were lining up to offer rich rewards in exchange for the clean start he wanted to make.

The identity of Schumacher’s team-mate had also been a matter of debate, since several drivers had proved unequal to the task of being a competitive number two. Briatore had dropped Jos Verstappen in favour of Johnny Herbert (resulting, it seems, in a beef that lasts until the present day) two races from the end of the 1994 season to bolster Benetton’s bid for the constructors’ championship.

Both Benetton drivers found their cars sporadically ran out of grip and the B195’s somewhat petulant manners didn’t help

Now Herbert was given a full season to do the job – a development few would have expected in the middle of 1989, when he was struggling with the effects of his ankle injuries and Briatore fired him from the same team.

If Benetton had hoped to turn the page on its supposed indiscretions, the aspiration lasted no longer than the season opener at Interlagos, where it had to defend itself on two fronts. First, Schumacher’s miraculous weight gain: in the previous rules, car minimum weight was 515kg, but now it had been raised to 595kg… including the driver, whose weight would be recorded at the start of the season.

Schumacher made a mockery of the concept by tipping the scales at 77kg – 8kg more than he weighed the previous season. Unless he really had piled on the pounds, Benetton would be able to run his car 8kg lighter, which was worth at least a tenth of a second or more per lap. Furious, Mosley directed that Schumacher be weighed post-race – 71.5kg.

The assumption was that he had either drunk copious quantities of water or brought a specially weighted crash helmet to the scales. It turned out to be the former. To avoid this loophole, all drivers are now subject to post-race checks.

Herbert acknowledges the home crowd after well-deserved maiden win at Silverstone

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Before the race, race director Charlie Whiting had informed both Benetton and Williams that samples of their Elf fuel had returned a different chemical ‘fingerprint’ to the one given pre-season.

Not that this would have a tremendous effect on two of the four drivers: polesitter Damon Hill had a slow start and later retired when his FW17 lost second gear and spun, while Herbert struggled in the spare B195 and retired with accident damage.

Schumacher won with David Coulthard second in the other Williams, though they were both disqualified. Elf challenged this with all its might, on the grounds that the samples had been tested on different equipment and by different entities, resulting in a partial backdown by the FIA.

Schumacher and Coulthard were reinstated, but their teams scored no constructors’ points and were fined $200,000 each. A most peculiar conclusion that satisfied none of the parties concerned, save perhaps the governing body’s accountants.

Before the appeal was heard, Hill won the Argentinian GP in Buenos Aires while Schumacher laboured to third, over 30s in arrears, on the bumpy and dirty track surface. Coulthard was forced out with a fly-by-wire throttle glitch, while Herbert was a lapped and unhappy fourth.

Both Benetton drivers found their cars sporadically ran out of grip and the B195’s somewhat petulant manners didn’t help; Herbert would cite this as the weekend where his relationship with the team began to sour as it became clear to him that Schumacher’s needs would always take priority.

Without question the B195 was less well-balanced than its predecessor, with a narrower ‘sweet spot’ the team found harder to locate. Naturally this led to Benetton becoming still more Schumacher-centric to avoid losing too much ground to Williams – for at this point in the season, defeat was looking likely.

Come round three, at an Imola now bedecked with temporary chicanes at any remotely fast corner, Schumacher qualified on pole… then got caught out in wet-to-drying conditions on race day, smiting the wall within half a lap of pitting for slicks.

The constructors’ crown was sealed for Benetton at Suzuka

Photo by: Sutton Images

For a man known to be handy in the wet, it was rather embarrassing, and he insisted the moment of snap oversteer on the crest at Piratella was the fault of the car rather than the driver.

Hill therefore registered another win, Herbert was seventh and two laps down. Some journalists were beginning to compose their season reviews already.

But Benetton insisted its performance issues were a consequence of some sub-optimal but fixable design problems, combined with a relative lack of pre-season testing mileage caused by the Renault engine’s high-frequency vibrations triggering component breakages. Resource that should have been expended on performance was devoted to troubleshooting instead.

Familiar excuses but next time out, after a highly productive test, Schumacher set pole position at Barcelona by sixth tenths of a second from Jean Alesi’s second-placed Ferrari, and Hill was almost a second slower.

In Britain, Hill’s clumsy challenge on Schumacher eliminated them both and opened the way for Herbert to take a well-deserved maiden victory, albeit too late to avert his eventual firing for a second time

From first practice, where he had struggled for balance and grip before making substantial overnight set-up changes, the reigning champion had found nearly two seconds. He won the race seemingly at a canter and, as a bonus, Hill slowed from second place when his FW17’s hydraulics sprung a leak on the final lap, enabling Herbert to inherit second.

From this point on it was virtually one-way traffic as Schumacher defeated Hill again in Monaco, ceded certain victory in Canada to Alesi, when he needed to pit for a new steering wheel, then won again in France, where Benetton introduced a revised airbox and front wing.

Hill’s title challenge evaporated over the summer and early autumn; when he wasn’t being shown the way by Schumacher, he was clouting other cars on track in a desperate attempt to pass, as at Silverstone, Monza and the Nurburgring.

In Britain, Hill’s clumsy challenge on Schumacher eliminated them both and opened the way for Herbert to take a well-deserved maiden victory, albeit too late to avert his eventual firing for a second time. At Monza, another avoidable collision sparked an angry trackside confrontation between the championship protagonists.

An uptick in results wasn't enough to save Herbert's fate at Benetton

Photo by: Getty Images

At the ’Ring, Damon collided with Alesi, then spun off in the wet – becoming a spectator as Schumacher made amends for the Imola imbroglio. Making three stops to Alesi’s one left Michael needing to make up a 22s deficit in 15 laps, which he accomplished with two to spare, nailing a dramatic second victory on home soil that year.

By this point it was known that Schumacher would be driving for Ferrari in 1996. Less well-known was that Williams management had quietly decided that Hill was no longer the man for the job.

Coulthard, too, was drifting out of favour despite seven podium finishes, plus a win at Estoril in the revised FW17B with its concealed cleverness between the rear wheels. When McLaren made Coulthard an offer he couldn’t refuse, Williams didn’t get involved in a bidding war.

The European GP at the Nurburging was round 14 of 17 – less busy times – and, as the F1 circus headed east and then south, Schumacher put the drivers’ title out of Hill’s mathematical reach by winning from third in the Pacific GP at the unloved Aida circuit.

At Suzuka a week later, Schumacher won again and both Williams drivers spun out, enabling Benetton to seal the constructors’ championship with one round to go. Hill duly won in Adelaide but it was too little, too late, in what was arguably the faster car of the season. Certainly Williams thought so, and planned for the future accordingly.

At Benetton, Briatore patted the team’s first constructors’ championship trophy and looked towards a future where new recruits Alesi and Gerhard Berger would slot seamlessly into the gap left by Schumacher and Herbert, continuing the victorious trend. That bit didn’t go quite as he imagined…

Race record

Starts 34
Wins 11
Pole positions 4
Fastest laps 8
Podiums 4
Championship points 137

Specification

Chassis Carbon fibre monocoque
Suspension Double wishbone, pushrod-actuated torsion bars/dampers
Engine Renault RS7 67-degree V10, naturally aspirated
Engine capacity 2992cc
Power 675bhp @ 15,200rpm
Gearbox Six-speed transverse semi-automatic
Brakes Carbon discs
Tyres Goodyear
Weight 595kg (including driver)
Notable drivers Michael Schumacher, Johnny Herbert

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The Benetton B195’s narrow ‘sweet spot’ could prove elusive

Photo by: James Mann