When it came down to sitting down to write about a classic Belgian Grand Prix, there was quite a large selection to choose from. Schumi's first win back in 1992? The 1966 race where Jackie Stewart so nearly lost his life? 1995 where Schumi came from 16th on the grid and won after a fantastic battle with Damon Hill?
These were all great contenders, but in the end I went for probably the most obvious one, and which sticks in the memory of many.
The 1998 Fosters Grand Prix Del Belgique, to give it its full title, is remembered for so many reasons.
Going into the race, Michael Schumacher was on a real high, having won the previous race in Hungary after a masterstroke three-stop strategy from Ross Brawn, while his title rival Mika Haikkinen could only manage to score one point following engine problems.
But qualifying turned into a McLaren battle—Haikkinen taking pole in the last seconds from team-mate David Coulthard. You would expect Michael Schumacher to line up third, but he was pipped at the post by Damon Hill in the ever-improving Jordan.
The practice sessions before qualifying had also seen two massive accidents at Eau Rouge, with Jacques Villeneuve going into the tires on the exit of the corner on Friday afternoon, before Mika Salo went off midway through the corner and hit a tire barrier head on, luckily escaping serious injury.
At the start Damon Hill made a terrible start and was back down to ninth by the time the cars reached La Source. But as the cars exited La Cource, David Coulthard lost the back end of his car and spun right across the track, colliding head-first with the support-race pit wall before sliding back across track and onto the grass.
This then triggered a chain-reaction back through the field, with a further 12 cars being caught up and crashing into each other. These included Eddie Irvine (Ferrari), Alex Wurz (Benetton), Rubens Barrichello (Stewart), and Johnny Herbert (Sauber). With the circuit completely blocked, the race was red-flagged straight away, with only Jordan and Williams not having a car involved or damaged.
After an hour, the race was finally re-started, minus Barrichello, Riccardo Rosset, Olivier Panis and Mika Salo. The second start was much cleaner, and Hill caused a major surprise by getting ahead of everyone to lead into La Source.
On the exit, Haikkinen and Schumacher were side by side when Haikkinen spun his McLaren in front of the whole field, causing cars to move everywhere. He managed to get away with no contact until Johnny Herbet, with nowhere to go, went over his front wheel and eliminated both of them from the race.
As the cars headed up to Les Combes, Hill led from Schumacher, Irvine, Alesi, Ralf Schumacher and Frentzen. Meanwhile Coulthard, who had a terrible start, went off after a collision with Wurz. DC managed to continue, but the Austrian was out. The safety car was then deployed for two laps to allow the marshals to clear the sdebris from the Haikkinen-Herbet crash, with racing resuming on lap three.
The order remained until lap eight, when Schumacher got a run on Hill coming out of Blachimount and took the lead under braking into the Bus Stop chicane. He then pulled out a massive lead and was ahead by 40 seconds when he came up to lap the recovering Coulthard.
2 comments Last one added 10 months ago — Leave a Comment
Daniel Chalmers 10 months ago
This was a fantastic race, and probably the day when I became totally hooked to Formula 1.
It had a huge bearing on the championship that season as well as if Schumacher had scored those 10 points with Hakkinen out on lap 1 it would have changed the whole complexion.
As for that DC/MS incident, there was fault as both ends. DC shouldn't have lifted off and MS shouldn't have rushed into lapping him as he had a huge lead. Schumacher had a little incident with Diniz earlier before this more when again he was in too much of a hurry to lap someone.
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Michael Griffin 10 months ago
If Schuey hit that massive chin on DC, he could have broken his hand and definitely bollocked up the title.
Great race, I still watch it back on youtube now.
Great recap mate.
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