McLaren’s
choice gives Schumacher victory as race is stopped
after Panis crashes.
"I’m
always pleased for 10 points, but there’s no
point in celebrating a victory in these
circumstances." So said Michael
Schumacher, the winner of the 19th Canadian Grand
Prix in Montreal. The race was curtailed on the 56th
lap of 69, after Olivier Panis, losing the
rear of his Prost Mugen-Honda, kissed a
barrier that sent him ricocheting to the other side
of the track, hitting a wall of tyres at 140 mph. He
was immediately air-lifted to the Sacre Coeur
hospital in Montreal with multiple closed fractures
of both legs. He is said not to be in any danger.
Schumacher went on to echo the sentiments of the
drivers, all of whom shared a universal concern for
the injured Frenchman. "I am very happy to
hear that Panis' injuries are not too serious, as at
the moment that is the most important thing."
There was an air of
glumness as the winner held his trophy aloft, not
only from the three triumphant drivers present on the
podium, but from the crowd too, who, in addition to
the dismay of Panis’ accident, had been robbed
of the one thing that they wanted to see most, their
local hero, Jacques Villeneuve embracing the
adoration of the crowd under the glory of the
Canadian flag, to the emotive sounds of their
National Anthem.
It was a race of high
incident and again, as in Spain, tyres played a major
role in the outcome of the race. As the lights went
out, Schumacher made his characteristic lightening
getaway, whilst Villeneuve fumbled for grip. Quick
off the mark also was the Benetton Renault of Jean
Alesi and Giancarlo Fisichella’s Jordan
Peugeot, who immediately started to harry the
Canadian for second place. With David Coulthard’s
McLaren and the other Jordan of Ralf
Schumacher clear of the rest of the field at the Senna
Hairpin, the second half of the field bunching
uncomfortably together, started to negotiate the
tricky left/right hander. In a portent to future
events, perhaps, Olivier Panis changed the face of
the race by letting his car slip momentarily from his
control, driving into and removing, the rear wing
from Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren. The
wing, acting like a scatter bomb amid the oncoming
traffic, took out Eddie Irvine’s Ferrari
straight away. "I made a good
start," said Irvine, "but everyone
was crowding into the corner. I noticed Panis and
Wurz on the outside line and on the second corner I
got past them on the outside. But two cars touched in
front of me and a piece of bodywork went under my
rear tyre which made me spin and the engine cut
out."
Johnny Herbert
in the Sauber was next to clip it, sending it
into the Path of Damon Hill who was lucky to
limit the damage to his Arrows by riding over
the debris with his front left tyre. Meanwhile Both Shinji
Nakano, Panis’ team mate and Jan
Magnussen in the Stewart Ford collided in
their attempts to avoid the rogue body part. For
Magnussen it was ‘race over’ too. "I
was running close with Nakano when we had to avoid
Panis’ wing (sic)" the Dane said. "I
tried to go round the outside, he went the other way.
When I began accelerating again, he seemed to
fish-tail as he came round. He side-swiped me and I
hit the barrier."
Feverish pit stops
ensued with Panis going in for a new front section,
and Hill to check his wheel balance. Hakkinen
didn’t make it back out, an unfortunate victim
of yet another first corner fiasco.
Further fiascoes were
to follow as the beleaguered Villeneuve, coming not
only to the end of a grueling week of media and
beurocratic pressures, but to the end of his second
lap, misjudged the corner leading onto the pit strait
and tucked it neatly into the wall. As the 120,000
crowd, watching on giant monitors, let out a
collective groan, the Canadian in a gesture of
‘How stupid can I get?’ smacked his hand
against the side of his helmeted head and stalked
away, no doubt fuming at the basic error he had made.
"The track was very slippery and I just
misjudged the corner." Said Villeneuve "I
didn't really expect to go sideways going into the
turn. I made a big mistake and I am highly
disappointed." So were the crowd who started
to vacate their seats even at that early stage.
This placed Fisichella
in a strong second place and on a charge to keep
Schumacher within range, setting an early fast lap in
doing so. Panis having dropped to 18th, was setting
the trail alight and also setting fastest laps.
Turn 9 was the scene
of the next incident when Ukyo Katayama put
his Minardi into the tyre wall leaving a
serious mess on the track which put the race under a
course yellow flag forcing the field to close up
behind the safety car for 4 laps. To add to
William’s woes, Heinz Harald Frentzen was
having a troubled time with blistering rear tyres
similar to that which he suffered in Spain and had to
pit early on lap 10 for fresh rubber. This was to be
rather futile as the problem persisted throughout the
race and in spite of three more stops, the German was
lucky to hold on to a final fourth place. With a
gaggle of cars getting back into their stride,
Schumacher started to pull out a useful lead whilst
further back down the road Jos Verstappen in
an unusually aggressive Tyrrell was tangling
with a leaden Rubens Barichello who was very
shortly to fall prey to Mika Salo and to Johnny
Herbert. It was not to be the Stewart
driver’s day, a gearbox selection fault was to
put him out on the 34th lap. Commenting on a
thoroughly disappointing weekend that started with so
much promise, Barichello said, "I just got
bogged down at the start-maybe the car was too heavy
with the fuel load we were running. I had so much
trouble in my fight with Salo. It was impossible to
hold on." He continued, "Maybe in
the changing track conditions we had the wrong setup.
In the end I had a problem with the gears and I
couldn’t select 6th."
Ralf Schumacher
running well in 5th, suffered what he thought was a
deflated tyre and he too slid of the track, running
along the Armco like a billiard ball down a cushion
and into the waiting jaws of a tyre wall. He walked
away resigned to the fact that there was little that
he could have done. "It felt like a puncture
in my left rear tyre," explained the German.
"But now I have looked at the telemetry with my
engineers, we can not tell if this is actually the
case. At the moment we do not have an explanation for
what happened."
The first round of
stops changed the race order. Fisichella and Alesi
pitted at the same time on lap 26, but the Jordan
team apparently caught by the Italian’s
unscheduled stop, produced a ragged tyre change
giving the Frenchman the advantage, leaving the pit
lane two seconds ahead of Fisichella. Coulthard on a
one stop strategy inherited the lead on lap 28, as
Schumacher pitted with heavily blistered rear tyres
gaining 10 seconds on the Ferrari and 25 seconds over
Alesi now in 3rd place.
With the positions on
the front runners unchanged Coulthard made his only
intended stop on lap 40 handing the lead back to
Schumacher who had yet to make his last stop. With
Herbert into fifth on the same strategy as the
McLaren, but temporarily forfeiting his place with a
ten second ‘stop & go’ penalty for pit
lane speeding, it looked like the race was duly won
by the Scotsman who regained a strong lead of over
thirty seconds after Schumacher’s second pit
stop on lap 44.
By this time Gerhard
Berger’s temporary replacement and fellow
Austrian, Alexander Wurz had retired with a
broken drive shaft on lap 37 after a brilliant first
drive for the team and Verstappen, shining brightly
if briefly for Tyrrell, suffering from a jammed
gearbox, retired on lap 44.
Excitement and despair
were to come shortly however, when Schumacher,
obviously in trouble, made an unscheduled stop with
badly pitted tyres only 6 laps later. This gave
Coulthard a seemingly unassailable lead of over 30
seconds, but his tyres too were on the way out and it
was down to team boss Ron Dennis to make the
decision to bring him in. "I had to take
responsibility for the call." said a
philosophical Dennis after the race. "We
could have carried on with the blistered tyres or we
could have had a puncture." Coulthard duly
pitted on lap 52, and with the fresh problem of a
faulty clutch, he stalled the engine. As they tried
in vain to get the McLaren out ahead of the German,
the pitch of the crowd rose as the Ferrari approached
the final turn into the pit straight and as it roared
past the start finish line the crowd erupted with
glee to the extent that it could almost have been
Schumacher’s home Grand Prix rather than the, by
now forgotten, Villeneuve’s.
Coulthard was lost
either way when Panis crashed and the safety car
bought the race to a halt with the positions standing
as of lap 54. Had he stayed out on the track for
another lap and a half, the race would have been his.
Had his tyres blown out it would have made no
difference. It was Dennis’ choice and the whole
team will have to live with it. "I’m not
quite sure what happened." Said Coulthard,
Putting on a remarkably brave face. "I had a
small problem before my first stop when I almost
didn’t get the gear. We only pitted because
Michael pitted and we thought we had a big enough
advantage and we thought it was the right thing to
do, just in case there was another pace car and
clearly it worked against us this time. It was my
race, but that’s motor racing."
Fisichella followed
second placed Alesi home, 6 tenths of a second
behind. Excellent results for both teams, needing the
credibility of podium finishes. Frentzen took 4th,
salvaging another rotten weekend for Williams. It
looks like they will have to wait a little longer to
attain the magical 100 Grand Prix wins and it is now
by no means certain that it will come sooner than
later. "I still find the new two pedal set-up
difficult." Frentzen said after the race.
"I started totally differently here then what I
normally do. It took the clutch a very long time to
grip and I had tyre problems after just four laps. It
was difficult for me to keep up as my left rear was
blistering."
Herbert held on to his
well deserved fifth position and Panis’ team
mate Nakano, ironically in the points for the first
time, rounded of the top six. Damon Hill should have
been jubilant having actually finished, albeit
still not a full race distance, in 9th place. "It
was a very lonely race, I was dead last for a long
time." He said, "I paid careful
attention to engine revs and I had a vibration
related to hitting Hakkinen’s wing, but it was
nothing more than a wheel weight problem."
With scenes of Panis
being lifted from the wreckage of his car,
distressing memories of Ayrton Senna’s
crash at Imola in 1994, resurfaced and it is certain
that the safety aspects of the track at Montreal will
now come under scrutiny. Michael Schumacher a key
figure in the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association,
said: "We will discuss the safety issues with
the FIA. We have improved safety
and we shall continue to look after it. That’s
why the GPDA is so important."
There were no
Champagne showers, the bottles stayed on the podium.
No one felt like celebrating and it is to all the
drivers’ credit that their one concern was for
the well-being of a member of a family and despite
it’s off-track squabbles and public
denouncements, in times of crisis, it closes ranks to
show the world that there is an acceptable
human face to the real live danger and macho
posturing of Motor racing.
Chris Richardson
