Grand Prix Gold: Europe 1997

Jerez '97: the runners & riders

Race Report: Good Guys Do Triumph

Jacques Villeneuve nicked the world title after Michael Schumacher ended their battle in the gravel, while Mika Hakkinen grabbed his first win

By Nigel Roebuck

As he brought the Williams-Renault into the assembly area at the end of the race, Jacques Villeneuve gave the V10 a great burst of revs, lighting up the tyres one last time, then stopping neatly within inches of the fence.

Probably that didn't sit too well with the stewards - showmanship seems to be frowned on these days in Formula One - but everyone else thought it was wonderful, a perfect flourish to end one of the most dramatic grands prix anyone could remember.

Villeneuve didn't win the European Grand Prix - he let Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard through almost within sight of the flag - but it hardly mattered, for in finishing third he clinched the 1997 World Championship, and more, he did it memorably.

The title fight was resolved on lap 48, when Jacques caught Michael off guard, and from way back put a pass on him into a tight right-hander. Having tried unsuccessfully to squeeze his rival into backing off, Schumacher then blatantly turned into him.

On this occasion, thankfully, it was the biter who got bitten.

Although the Williams's left side-pod was damaged, the Ferrari finished up in the gravel trap. After a few seconds, Schumacher stepped stiffly from his car, then walked to his pit. He had absolutely nothing of which to complain. Now it was simply a matter of Villeneuve's making the finish, to score at least that single point he needed to make sure of the championship.

His car behaving erratically, it was simple good sense for Jacques to avoid any possible contretemps on the last lap, and no one was too sad about that, for Hakkinen - who has been robbed so many times - at last took his first grand prix win. In every way, a mighty emotional afternoon.

The circuit at Jerez de Frontera is rarely used for Formula One, and understandingly so, for it is an insalubrious place, with lamentable organisation, and thus hardly an appropriate venue for the settling of a world championship.

Nevertheless, in the context of today, the track itself is not bad, and through the practice days the paddock crackled with tension as Villeneuve and Schumacher - taking care to save as many new sets of tyres as possible for the race on this abrasive track - worked away at set-ups for Sunday.

Qualifying could hardly have been more dramatic. In the early minutes of the session, Villeneuve did a lap in 1m 21.072s, confident he would beat it later when the track sped up. In fact, though, the day got hotter, so that the track got slower, and Jacques was unable to better his own time. Neither, as it turned out, was anyone else. After half an hour, Schumacher went for it, putting together one of his incredible sleight-of-hand laps - but recording exactly the same time as Villeneuve, to the thousandth.

The coincidence had everyone reeling, but we weren't done yet. With ten minutes to go, and the track temperature still rising, Heinz-Harald Frentzen went out for a last shot at joining his teammate Villeneuve on the all-important front row. Heinz was up on the first split time, and on the second, but towards the end of the lap he made a slight mistake. Over the line he went and the clocks stopped at 1m 21.072!

"I think," Frentzen grinned afterwards, "that next year maybe we need four figures after the dot."

Ferrari's Giorgio Ascanelli calculated what a thousandth of a second was worth, in terms of distance, on this 2.751-mile circuit, and came up with a figure of 5.6cm.

In the race morning warm-up, though, Hakkinen's McLaren-Mercedes led the way, followed by the Benetton-Renault of Gerhard Berger, who was preparing for his last grand prix and clearly not intending to stroke it. Olivier Panis's Prost-Mugen Honda was third and then came Coulthard, Villeneuve, Johnny Herbert's Sauber, Schumacher and Frentzen.

This being the world championship decider, Ferrari and Williams each brought four cars to Jerez and all were tried in the warm-up, their drivers running race fuel loads and putting touches to their set-ups.

At Suzuka two weeks ago, it was very much two Ferraris against one Williams, Frentzen not able to offer the support that Villeneuve needed against Schumacher and Irvine, but in Jerez, Heinz stepped up to the plate and it was Michael's turn to fight the lone fight, his team mate not truly on the pace this weekend.

For all that, most reckoned Schumacher would do it (not least his manager Willi Weber, who had 100,000 T-Shirts bearing the legend 'Michael Schumacher 1997 World Champion'). He would make a better start than Villeneuve, they reckoned, and that would be the end of it.

One who dissented was Jackie Stewart: "Jacques will win the championship - I'd bet my house on it."

Somewhat illogically, given that the first corner of Jerez is a tight right-hander, pole is on the left. In addition, the right side of the track is more commonly used, and thus cleaner, offering more grip.

That being so, Villeneuve knew there was a high chance that Schumacher, starting second, would beat him away from the line. "There was another thing too," he said. "We knew Michael had three new sets of tyres for the race, whereas Heinz and I only had two, so we were starting on used tyres. In the first segment of the race, it was always likely that Schumacher would have an edge."

Even so, Ferrari's slingshot start took Jacques by surprise. "I didn't make a bad start, although it was very slippery where I was and I got a lot of wheelspin. But Michael took off like a rocket - it's been like that since halfway through the year - and it was very sus... surprising."

Given that he was that crucial one point adrift of Schumacher in the points standings, Villeneuve had rather more to lose in the event of a coming-together with his rival, so he made no attempt to block him - and indeed ran wide at the first turn, which rather obliged Frentzen to nip past him.

At the end of the first lap, the orange-red number 5 screamed by in the lead, already two seconds clear of Frentzen, with Villeneuve a further second behind, then Hakkinen, Coulthard, Hill (who started poorly after qualifying a superb fourth), Irvine, Magnussen (the quicker of the Stewart drivers this weekend) and Berger.

Clearly, Schumacher was not going to be able to get away, but neither did the Williams seem able to do much about catching him, the lead remained steady at around two seconds. And, by lap eight, Frentzen's tyres were starting to go away, to the point that now he let Villeneuve through; by the time he got by, though, Schumacher was four seconds to the good.

"The first stint didn't look good," Jacques said, "because I was pushing and I just couldn't catch Michael. One lap he'd go slower, then faster, and I'd do the same - but the gap stayed the same. It got to be a very physical race, too, because for so long we were driving as if we were doing qualifying laps."

Lap 21 saw another of those amazing coincidences: Schumacher lapped in 1m 24.773s and so, again to the thousandth, did Villeneuve. Next time round, Michael was in for his first stop, and then Jacques made his on the 22nd, which put Frentzen temporarily in the lead, with Hakkinen second, Schumacher third, and Villeneuve fourth.

Now the complexion of the race was fundamentally changing, for Frentzen was playing the same role as Irvine had at Suzuka, deliberately running at a slow rate (two seconds off the pace), so as to allow his team mate to close on his championship rival. By lap 26 Villeneuve was right up with Schumacher and the game was on. When Hakkinen pitted on lap 26, and Frentzen - his job done - on lap 28, Michael and Jacques had a straightforward head to head going, for both race and title.

"As soon as we put on new tyres, I got closer to him," said Villeneuve, "and I thought 'Okay, now I can make a move,' but when we came up on Norberto (Fontana), who opened his door wide for Michael but then closed it for me.

"Of course, Sauber also use the Ferrari engines, which may have had something to do with it... That gave Michael a three-second lead, unfortunately, and I had to start over again."

Others, fortunately, were more co-operative. It might have been expected for example, that Ralf Schumacher would come to his brother's aid when the leaders came up to lap him, but Ralf moved over for Michael, and then for Jacques. For lap after lap, the gap stayed at around a second, with the McLarens - Hakkinen now behind Coulthard, following their stops - a further quarter of a minute back, then Frentzen, Irvine, Hill and Berger.

On the near horizon now were the second stops, and Schumacher began them, on lap 43, with Villeneuve in on the 44th. Both stops went without a hitch and now it was a shoot-out to the finish. Second place to the other was no good to either man, and any order change would have to come on the track, for no more stops were scheduled.

Now Villeneuve really began to motor, reducing the lead from 2.6 seconds to a second even to three-tenths in successive laps. As they went into their 48th, with 21 to the flag, the Williams was matching the Ferrari.

Into the Dry Sack right-hander it did more than that. Catching Schumacher completely unawares, Villeneuve attacked under braking, coming from so far back that Michael never suspected a move was imminent.

In the best overtaking manoeuvre of the year, Jacques had him clean.

Schumacher didn't see it that way of course. "He tried a rather optimistic attack," he sniffily said, which was palpable nonsense. "It worked fine for him, but not for me," he added, and that much was true, for Villeneuve survived the incident and he did not. What Michael failed to mention, was that there would have been no 'incident', had he not desperately aimed his car at the Williams and simply driven into it.

"After the second stops, I was hard after Michael," Jacques said, "and after three laps I knew I had to make my move then, because soon my tyres would start to go off a bit. Also I didn't want to give him time to settle, so even though I was 10 or 15 yards behind him into the braking area, I just went for it. I couldn't go any more to the inside - I was already on the grass, so maybe Michael had his eyes closed, or somehow his hands slipped on the wheel, or something...

"Actually, I was surprised that he left the door open, but once I was inside him it was just matter of time before he decided to turn in on me. Thing was, he didn't do it well enough, because he went off, and I didn't.

"I expected he'd do that," Jacques went on, "so I knew I was taking a big risk. We banged wheels and I really thought I'd broken the car. As for him, I knew he was out right away because he hit me really hard and went into the gravel trap."

Astonishingly, the stewards declined to take action against Schumacher, later deciding that this had been nothing more than 'a racing accident'. Ye Gods.

Whatever, Villeneuve led and Schumacher was out, but even so Jacques refused to believe the world championship was safe because the impact had been substantial; for a while he had worries about completing the remaining laps, and sixth place - one point - was his minimum requirement.

After a couple of cautious laps, checking the Williams out, he felt confident enough to pick up the pace again.

Almost unnoticed in this bedlam were Hill's retirement after a good run, and a chaotic second stop by Frentzen, who had been running behind Villeneuve at the time of the fracas.

"They were on the radio to me, but I got slightly confused when came in and spotted what I thought was my lollipop and pulled into the pit. Unfortunately it was the Benetton pit." Ultimately, Heinz made his way to Williams, but by the time he rejoined he was in ninth place.

Through the closing stages, Villeneuve kept a reasonable pace, running no faster than he felt was necessary; even at one point allowing Shinji Nakano's Prost to unlap itself. "He was in my mirrors all the time and I didn't want the distraction."

Five seconds or so behind Jacques ran the McLarens, which were trying without success to lap Fisichella's Jordan. Finally with three laps to go, Coulthard was told by his pits to let Hakkinen by.

"I couldn't make any headway against Fisichella," said a slightly po-faced David, "so they thought it would be a good thing to let Mika through and let him have a chance - and just as we did that, the Jordan got out the way. I'd been behind it for 10 laps."

Once past the Jordan, Hakkinen and Coulthard began swiftly to catch Villeneuve and so on the final lap were up with him.

"After the hit with Schumacher, my car felt strange, unstable, at the rear end, particularly on right-handers," said Jacques. "I could go hard, but the tyres would heat up in a strange way and I'd have to back off for a bit."

Did Villeneuve make a gift of the European Grand Prix to Hakkinen? It certainly looked that way, and Jacques suggested that it was nothing more than Mika deserved.

"He stayed out of the battle in the first part of the race when he was quicker than me," said Jacques. "When he caught me, it was a question of either pushing like a maniac, risking going off with my car going off with my car handling strangely, or seeing if he made a move and then letting him through. David was also very close, so I didn't fight him, either.

"Mika and David could have pushed me at the start of the race, when they were quicker, so I didn't want to play any dirty tricks on them - it was better to let them through,"

It seemed Williams and McLaren had 'reached an accommodation' for this crucial race, and the feeling of collusion between the two was no more than an evening of the odds in the battle against Ferrari.

"Today," said Ron Dennis, "the good guys won." Hakkinen, almost speechless with emotion at finally winning a grand prix, put it this way: "I lost a lot of time in the beginning of the race because I was behind Jacques, but I didn't want to do anything that would risk his championship."

If Villeneuve was happy to let the McLaren boys by, that was as far as the charity went.

"The pits kept me informed about where they were - but mainly about where Irvine was. That was the danger. I didn't want Irvine to come close to me - it wasn't worth the risk."

The finish wasn't hugely close, but with Hakkinen, Coulthard, Villeneuve, Berger, Irvine and Frentzen covered by fewer than five seconds. Mika and Jacques, the big winners of this day, were not the only ones to smile afterwards, for Gerhard overtook Eddie - not his favourite driver - on his very last lap in a GP car.

"Yes it was a big risk," Villeneuve murmured again. "I knew Michael was capable about taking me out, but there was no point in just being second. It was better to try, and finish in the gravel than to finish second - and I have heavy shoulders. Now I just feel wonderful."

Qualifying: Villeneuve first among equals

By Andrew Benson

If it had been in a movie, the audience would have groaned at the corniness of it all, but then 1997 has been a bit like that. One point apart when they arrived in Spain for the European Grand Prix, most suspected that Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher would end up on the front row of the grid together.

But no one would have dreamed that the pair of them and Heinz-Harald Frentzen would set the same qualifying time. Racing drivers are practical types, and three men simply shrugging at the amazing coincidence that a grid that set up the race so perfectly should happen. It was down to everyone else to marvel that three drivers had qualified on exactly the same time to a thousandth of a second for the first time in 47 years of the Formula One World Championship.

In one of the most exciting qualifying sessions of the year, there were many times when it looked like any one of the three drivers - or one of the McLarens for that matter - could go quicker, but each time the lap fell short, and Villeneuve, Schumacher and Frentzen all set 1m 21.072s, in that order, thereby deciding their grid positions.

"I think next year we need four numbers after the dot," Frentzen said with a grin. "It's very surprising," Villeneuve added. "But I guess it's the best way to have the championship settled. I'm actually surprised that the lap was quick enough for pole. I made a few mistakes and the wind was strong, so I didn't push hard because I didn't know what it was going to do."

Villeneuve set his time in the first quarter of an hour of a session in which the track seemed to slow gradually throughout the hour as the temperature went up. But less than 15 minutes later, Schumacher brought gasps all round when he went round in exactly the same time, having been faster on both the first and second splits.

Perhaps he lost time at the chicane, where there were stationary yellow warning flags after his brother had spun off, dictating that he had to leave a little more margin than was absolutely necessary.

"I had the situation under control," he said. "I knew from my dashboard read-out I was going to do a 1:21.0, but I didn't know if it would be in front or behind Jacques. To have us both on the front row is what I was looking for. It proves we are all competing on a very high level."

Then with 10 minutes left, Frentzen, who had been held up by Eddie Irvine on his first lap, went out for a last go. He, too, was up on the first two splits.

"I knew it was going to be quick," he said. "But I lost a little at the chicane when I got the car sideways."

In the pits, Schumacher grinned and shook his head in disbelief. It was almost as if someone had planned it. "I was always very confident," Villeneuve said. "The car was very good from the beginning of the weekend, so we didn't have to do much work on set-up and could just concentrate on checking tyre-wear."

For Villeneuve there was more good news, for Irvine, who had ruined his race in Japan and had already tried pretty hard to wind Villeneuve up, was down in seventh place, seemingly too far back to have any significant impact on the Canadian's race. With Irvine, though, Villeneuve said, you never know what is going to happen.

View results, stats, quotes and images from the 1997 European GP at FORIX

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