Spa 1998: Ten years after

This weekend in Spa marks the tenth anniversary of one of the most popular Grand Prix results of recent times.

On August 30th 1998 Damon Hill led home Jordan teammate Ralf Schumacher at the end of a race memorable for one of the most spectacular first-lap crashes ever seen, and the sight of an irate Michael Schumacher assaulting David Coulthard in the pits after crashing into the latter while lapping him in the rain.

But what the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix is really remembered for is the first win for Eddie Jordan.

In fact, the 1998 season had been a bit of a nightmare for EJ. The previous year the team had scored a few podium finishes with Giancarlo Fisichella and Schumacher Jr. Had they not both been rookies, they might have done even better - Ralf's assault on Fisi in Argentina was a valuable lesson.

The arrival of Hill for '98 promised to be the final piece of the puzzle, but in its original guise the new narrow-track car was disappointing. Indeed, the team failed to score a point until Ralf finished sixth in the wet at Silverstone, the ninth round of the World Championship.

Things got better, and at Hockenheim he started fourth, while in Hungary, Hill was fourth on the grid. Then came Belgium, where Damon qualified third. Only the McLarens of Mika Hakkinen and Coulthard were ahead.

"It was a pretty special weekend," Hill recalls today. "For some reason the Jordan always worked well at Spa. You get in and the first time you run round the circuit the car's well balanced, and you feel you could make it work and get the most out of it. And so from there onwards we were always in with a chance.

Damon Hill on the podium © LAT

"We really did get the best out of the car all weekend, and qualified well, in third. The rain just threw that huge variable into the mix which meant that anything could happen. And it did!"

"Damon had an extraordinarily good qualifying," says current Force India team manager Andy Stevenson, who at that time was Ralf's chief mechanic. "That car wasn't overly good earlier in the season, so we weren't overly confident that we were going to get a victory, we were just hoping for points. Our most ambitious thoughts would have been just to get points, we didn't go into the race thinking we could win it."

Stevenson's view ties in with Hill's memory. With his experience of winning, Hill sensed a sniff of victory that others in the team didn't.

"There was a point on the Saturday night when we were going through the race strategy," says Damon. "And I was asked to go and do a PR thing for the team, the factory staff of Jordan, who had come out to the race. And I said, 'No, we're not going, we can win this race. We've got to stay here and do everything we can.' So there was a bit of a rumpus about that one. But because I'd got the seniority in that respect, I think it was important that we did it."

It shouldn't be forgotten that the man he was working late with was his race engineer Dino Toso, who sadly succumbed to cancer only last month.

Rain on Sunday meant that all bets were off. Sure enough, everything turned to chaos when Coulthard spun on the exit of La Source, right in front of Hill, triggering an accident of epic proportions.

"The first lap coming down the hill was just pure luck," says Hill. "I saw DC get on the drain cover and just snap sideways. He slewed right and reversed into the wall, and I knew he was going to bounce back across the track, so I knew it was one of those things where if I stepped on the brake there were 20 other cars behind me. Luckily I made it through and got back to the grid."

Plenty of others didn't, as car after car had piled into the wreckage. One man who had a narrow escape was Ralf in the other Jordan, as his former race engineer Sam Michael recalls: "I can remember Ralf pulling over to the side of the road, looking at what was in front of him, and taking the decision to put his brakes on.

Giancarlo Fisichella crashes the Benetton © Rainer Nyberg/FORIX

"If you look at the video he actually parks on the grass, waits for about 10 cars to pile into each other, and then pulls first gear. He's like a soldier going through the battlefield after all the bombs have been dropped. It's an incredible image! I remember him coming in the radio and saying, 'I was so lucky...'"

There was a long delay while the mess was cleaned up. And the rain kept falling.

"Then we sat there for about an hour while they cleared it all up," says Hill. "I was dying for pee, but I didn't dare get out. I was thinking, 'This is taking forever, I wish they'd get on with this race.' By the time they started I was absolutely freezing! It was soaking wet. And then we went off and did a two-hour race in the rain. I thought I'd have hypothermia by the end of the race, it was the first time I've been really cold in a Grand Prix..."

Pole-sitter Mika Hakkinen was out on the first corner, so Hill led initially at the restart, but Michael Schumacher got by after seven laps. Second place was still going to be a spectacular outcome for Jordan, but then Michael hit the back of Coulthard and returned to the pits on three wheels, before heading off for a confrontation with the Scot.

When the dust settled, the full realisation of what was happening began to sink in. Hill was now leading, and his teammate was second and closing in. Then a big shunt for Giancarlo Fisichella led to a late safety car period and allowed Ralf to catch right up. It was then that things got very interesting. The German was obviously keen to score his first win, and he felt he could pass Hill in the closing laps.

"Michael was out, and then they had a safety car and it all bunched up," says Hill. "I was thinking to myself, Eddie's never won a race before, and I'm pretty sure that Ralf would like to have a race with me. So I asked Eddie if he was going to talk to Ralf about things.

"I said, 'I'm not sure what you think about this, but it's up to you. I don't mind racing for this, but it would seem like a big risk if we both raced for this.' Looking back on it, I left the ball in Eddie's court, but I made my point, which was you could get a really good result, or we could lose it."

On the pit wall, memories flashed back to Argentina the previous year.

Ralf Schumacher and Sam Michael before the race © LAT

"I knew what was happening because we could hear the radio conversations," says Andy Stevenson. "I wasn't disappointed at all. For me it was important that we got the 1-2, and if Ralf was allowed to race, it was pretty obvious to most that neither of them was going to finish!

"Damon put it to him very clearly. I can remember the conversation actually. Basically he said to Eddie you can have a 1-2 here, and his actual words were, if we two race - that's what he said, we two - then you could end up with nothing. It's up to you.

"There was obviously some discussion between EJ and the engineers, and then Sam put the message out to Ralf, 'you cannot race Damon'. Ralf caught him very, very quickly in the wet, because Ralf had a car that was set up more for the wet than the dry, and that's why he gained on Damon quickly."

Mike Gascoyne, Jordan's chief designer at the time, recalls: "I remember coming up to the first stops when it was raining and switching Ralf to the heavier wet, which was a big advantage for him. As a team decision, it was a very obvious and easy decision to make. Jordan at that time were not very good at making those sorts of calls, and I said to Eddie there's nothing to think about here, just do it, just tell them."

Hill knew that Ralf had been told to hold station, but he wasn't convinced that the German would heed the order.

"When the lights changed I was thinking I'm not really sure if I was Ralf I would want to obey an instruction to come second. I was pretty certain he was going to race, so I just legged it anyway when the safety car pulled in, and didn't leave anything to chance..."

In the event, Ralf didn't try anything silly, and the two yellow cars crossed the line to score a totally unexpected result. The only man who wasn't overwhelmed by the whole experience was Schumacher Jr. Sam Michael had the job of making sure he understood what was important: "We'd never won a Grand Prix before, and to put that at risk would have been absolutely crazy. We had to make the 1-2 and that was far more important than Ralf scoring his first win, because the team is always much more important than one individual.

Damon Hill leads teammate Ralf Schumacher and the Sauber of Jean Alesi © LAT

"It's always got to be like that, it doesn't matter whether it's a driver, engineer or team principal. The team is a massive group of people, and you've got to put that in front of everything. Ralf understood that later, it was just his competitive streak on the day - he wanted to win. The other thing is he could look back and say he was beaten by a world champion.

"He was very fast in the wet. There were some points where he was five seconds a lap quicker than Damon. But Damon qualified third and Ralf was eighth, and you can say if you want first peek at the win, then you should have qualified better. Getting the ability to win comes right from start of the weekend, and Damon earned that by qualifying well, and by surviving the shunt."

Hill's intransigence on Saturday night, when he preferred to focus on strategy rather than hurry off to a PR appearance, proved to be prophetic.

"The thing is when you're in a position to win a race, there's another dimension that comes into play," says Damon. "You can be demotivated by being in an uncompetitive car, and that's a fact of life, especially if you've been running at the front. I have to say I think I spotted the opportunity where I think they had not spotted it. The difference was that Jordan had never won a Grand Prix before, and I had. I think I focused their minds on what they should be doing. It unlocked their belief that they could do it."

Ian Phillips, then the Jordan commercial boss, agrees: "Never take it away from Damon. He was very clear in talking to the team about what needed to be done. The reason we employed Damon was we felt that the element that was missing was that we had nobody in the team, be it a driver or an engineer, with any experience of winning. The reason for hiring Damon was that he could bring the know-how on how to win a race. That paid dividends. He could have retired on the spot there and then, and we would still have had full value for money out of Damon! He brought us value."

Meanwhile all hell broke loose in the Jordan pits. It was a victory that even those who had a bad day - like McLaren chief Ron Dennis - could smile about.

"There was a shot of EJ on the TV," says Stevenson, "where he danced down the pitlane like some sort of demented fool! Which was quite entertaining, actually. It was good for the team, but it was good to see people genuinely enjoying it. It didn't look like Ralf was enjoying it much, but with the team, with Eddie, with Damon, with everybody else, it was a real celebration. It was a great result for the team. I was pleased, chuffed to bits."

Ralf Schumacher, Damon Hill, and Jean Alesi on the podium © LAT

Gascoyne recalls the trip home: "I remember we were flying back with Stoddy (Paul Stoddart), when he used to be a sponsor, so we had a fairly adventurous plane ride home. The announcement when we were coming into land was not fasten your seat belts or take your seats, it was 'we're about to land, can you all hold on to your drinks'!"

Eddie Jordan himself wasn't booked on the Paul Stoddart charter, and it was a while before he realised he didn't have a ride.

"Eddie's wife Marie was supposed to come out on the Sunday morning," recalls Phillips. "And Eddie and I were supposed to go back in the same helicopter on Sunday night. But the weather was so bad that the helicopter never took off from England. At about 7:30 pm we realised we had no way of going home!

"We set off to Brussels to get a flight, and we were stuck in traffic and I said to Eddie, 'this is hopeless. Why not call Brian de Zille, one of our sponsors, and ask him if he could scramble his plane from Jersey to Liege to take us into Oxford?'

"So Eddie worked his charm and buttered him up. He said, 'Brian, I want you to be to be the first person that I spoke to', etc etc. So the plane was sent to Liege. Oxford Airport had closed because Frank [Williams] and Flavio [Briatore] had got home early, and there was no booking from us. But Eddie's secretary managed to phone the security people, and they said 'we'll turn the lights on, and we'll let you land.' We got in about 10:30 pm. We both fell asleep on the plane, but we had a massive party at Eddie's house the following day."

Phillips had no doubts about the value of the win: "It was a monkey off the back, really, because we'd been pretty successful at hyping ourselves, and actually most people thought that we had already won a race! By that stage in the recall figures in high street surveys, which [title sponsor] Benson & Hedges had done a lot of, we were second only to Ferrari..."

The day after the race I rang Eddie Jordan for an Autosport magazine feature. Prior to Spa he'd been wound up by critical comments on the team from Michael Schumacher, so to win at the Ferrari star's expense - at the track where Jordan had given the German his F1 racing debut seven years earlier - had some resonance.

Eddie Jordan celebrates with Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher on the podium

"I don't know why, I always felt a win would come as a bit of a surprise, but not by luck," said EJ, who had yet to come back to earth. "I'm reasonably psychic, and have been for some time. When the accident happened with Schumacher, I felt I had seen it before. I felt 'How did I know that was going to happen?'"

Before the race he made a bet with a Swiss journalist that a Jordan would win. The unlucky chap gave EJ odds of 10-1.

"That was great! But this race has cost me a goddamn fortune. Sixteen times the points' money for every member of staff, plus Ralf's bonus money, plus Damon's money. It would have been cheaper for the company had they both crashed!

"But this is the most pleasurable money we'll ever have to pay out..."