Advantage Hill
The rise in Damon's fortunes at the Belgian Grand Prix in late August can be attributed to a wooden plank. Having started the race 31 points down on Schumacher, by the time Michael and Damon had mounted the podium, the gap had increased to 35 points. But before supper-time, fourteen points had either changed hands or vanished into the ether. Damon Hill had won at Belgium the previous year but in 1994, Spa-Francorchamps had been interfered with. What had been a circuit that inspired racers and spectators alike had, in unison with the other fast tracks, had much of the stuffing knocked out of it. Eau Rouge was now reduced to a chicane. Michael Schumacher, wearing his Grand Prix Drivers Association hat had suggested the new line as he looked for safety improvements, yet Damon pointed out that it removed one and invented yet another problem - the cars would now be braking directly in line with the concrete barrier. The alterations also had another by-product - it slowed the circuit down, unintentionally in Benetton's favour.
After examining a gravel trap at close quarters during the early part of Friday's qualifying session, Hill later found a time that would put him third on the grid. On pole, was Barrichello in a Jordan - nice to see another name at the front, but wet conditions can throw up the unpredictable. Damon's race start was a little lax and Alesi passed him through La Source. By lap three, Damon was past Barrichello while Alesi's engine had taken care of itself, but Benetton No.5 had not been hanging around, it was already nearly twelve seconds ahead. Damon pitted a lap before his colleague, David Coulthard, but being held up, by lap 14, he was running behind his team-mate. No problem - or so it should have been. Hill has always been very conscious of team needs and is cautious when it comes to overtaking a 'friendly car'. Be it caution or just well-matched cars - or drivers, Damon stayed behind David for the next 23 laps or so. Hill was a little peeved with his team for not ordering Coulthard to stand aside and let Damon take up the mantle of chasing Schumacher - he had asked them to in plain enough terms over the radio. "I just couldn't get past David, as soon as I ran close to him, I got in his dirty air. I have no complaints about David, he drove fantastically well."
Frank Williams, the true racer, obviously wanted Damon to pester Coulthard rather harder on the track before he gave instructions to move over. Should Damon have risked more? During their second re-fuelling stops, the team spotted what they thought was a loose rear wing on Coulthard's car and called him back in. This at last let Damon through, but too late. With only ten laps remaining, the best Hill could do was set the fastest lap of the race. Schumacher finished fourteen seconds before Damon crossed the line. Only when Damon's plane landed in London was he told that Schumacher had been disqualified, thereby handing the win to Hill. The wooden plank, now mandatory on all cars, which is fitted to raise the running height of a car, was found to be 25% too thin on the German's car. As the race had progressed, the front portion of this skidblock had been worn down, probably under heavy braking. Damon had avoided such a predicament when he felt his car rubbing the ground in warm up - he had his wing adjusted to raise the car's running height. Schumacher's car set-up had been just too close to the limit. Schumacher's appeal against his two-race ban for his black-flag incident was heard by the FIA but they upheld the decision and with immediate effect. Damon would drive the next two Grands Prix without Schumacher to contend with.
Since the San Marino Grand Prix, when Hill took the team's number one slot, he had been after the number one engineer, David Brown. He had been Senna's engineer and before that, he was Prost's and Mansell's. Only now were Williams prepared to change the support teams over, indicating the raised status of Hill. "It wasn't something I wanted to do from a personal point of view, but from a professional one it was the right thing to do." All eyes were on Damon as qualifying got under way for the Italian GP. Hill was favourite to win, but it would not be a walk-over. Alesi and Berger took the front row in their Ferrari's and keeping Hill company on the second row was Johnny Herbert. His under-funded Lotus was more familiar with the rear of the grid. but, on this power circuit, engine output mattered and the new Mugen-Honda V10 certainly had that. Damon was well pumped up before the parade lap as his car, no sooner lined up on the grid, started leaking oil. Unable to fix it on the grid, Damon had to dash to the pits, strap in and get his reserve car on the track before the pit-lane closed. Away from the grid, the Ferrari's negotiated the first chicane in the premier places. Whereas Irvine, starting from ninth place, tried to evict Herbert from the piece of road he occupied. The shunted Lotus stopped rolling just in time to avoid the Williams of Damon but the melee that characterises Formula One starts at Monza claimed others, Coulthard for one. Luckily for Damon, the race was red-flagged, as the Ferrari's were several furlongs ahead by the time he had escaped the breakers yard called Variante Goodyear. The restart again caused problems, but this time it was five rows behind Damon. Ahead, it was obvious that Alesi was on a two-stop strategy as he was pulling away from Berger and Hill in leaps and bounds. Berger, who had to swap cars before the race after he had a dramatic crash in warm-up, was still not happy with his car, even though it could pull away from the Williams on the straights. Damon reported that the Ferrari had been disgorging oil from the beginning and his visor and mirrors were covered in a kind of caustic glue. Alesi pitted on lap 15, but failed to return to the track. His car, disobediently refusing to select first gear rolled a few yards until it's now desperate driver climbed from the cockpit and disappeared into the darkness of the garage.
Ten laps later, Berger called in for what would be only a marginally less dramatic pit-stop. Ready to pull away, he found his path blocked by Panis' Ligier entering it's adjacent pit. Damon unaware of this was however trying to make the best of the lap without Berger in front. He pitted next lap and exited ahead of the Ferrari but behind Coulthard. This time, though, the number two Williams stood aside for his elder and took to riding gunshot for Hill. Reminded of the way he had inherited the lead from Prost last year when the Frenchman's engine expired, Damon started to back off to save wear. Berger, seeing the gap lessen on his pit-board, conversely started pushing but in the end he would have needed an extra three laps to draw alongside Hill. The gap was about five seconds as they crossed the line. His Williams team-mate though ran out of fuel on the last lap - and he was driving the car that Damon had originally intended to race! Hill, ecstatic at winning what was his seventh Grand Prix said: "I am a lucky man to have twice experienced the kind of reception you get on the podium at Monza. It is now essential that we try to get another ten points at the next race in Portugal to get ourselves back on par for when Schumacher returns."
Qualifying at Estoril failed to conform exactly to Hill's script. Chasing Berger's pole position time, car zero came upon the Jordan containing Eddie Irvine. The unfortunate Irishman, who had been found responsible for a number of misdemeanours during the past twelve months was having a bad day. Spinning at Turn 8, he was unable to regain control before Damon, hoping for a flyer of a lap and finding nowhere to go, clipped Irvine's front-left tyre, with his rear and was instantly tipped over, landing not quite but almost on his head. Dangling from his belt, Damon quickly released himself and clambered from his overturned car, completely unharmed. "It's the first time I've ever been upside down in a racing car and I'm just pleased it wasn't closer to the barrier." That was the end of the session for Hill but his earlier time was quick enough to secure a front row place.
On the word go, Damon's flight away from the grid looked more like an overweight lady running for the bus than a 800bhp missile. David Coulthard slotted in behind Berger and Hill clung to third. "The car started creeping on the grid, but fortunately, I didn't go over the line." Damon was having trouble with his first set of tyres and was losing grip on parts of the circuit. "I was struggling to keep up." His Williams team-mate took up the duty of leader when the Ferrari of Berger broke it's gearbox. Now Damon could rest a little easier, for as long as he kept the field behind him at bay, he should eventually win the race. Coulthard and Hill pitted on successive laps and rejoined in their respective places until lap 28, when Damon, now running much closer to his partner, took an opportunity to slip past the inside of Coulthard when he ran wide at Turn 8. "If you virtually stop, and put on full lock, you can make it round there. I thought it was worth trying at that moment." Hill pulled out a little gap from the Williams number two and survived the next forty-two laps to win the race.
There were some hairy moments though, when Jean-Marc Gounon ran onto the grass on the finish straight and then veered left, back onto the track, just as Damon was about to lap him. Swift avoiding action kept Damon's race victory in sight. Ten laps from the end, Blundell's engine blew up and for a short while, Hill was blinded by both smoke and then oil on his visor. Driving with great self-control and maturity, Damon backed-off towards the end, reminiscent of Alain Prost - trying to win the race at the slowest speed possible, in order to preserve both machine and driver. As they crossed the line, the Williams pit team hurled themselves over the pit wall to wave at car zero and car two, separated as they were, by just 6/10ths. Full points for the Constructors Championship, Williams now edged two points ahead of Benetton, and a maximum score for Damon put him within a single point of Schumacher.
Damon was understandably overjoyed: "It's a magic result, it really is. A lot of people have been considering that the two races when Michael was away as a kind of foregone conclusion and it's not as simple as that. I'm absolutely, completely, utterly delighted because I knew that we had a good car and engine but you are asking a lot for reliability and all the luck factors that can't be accounted for. It's a big relief to do the job and finish it off properly with ten points. We've now got a fantastic platform from which to challenge in the last three races." "It was a good race - it was tough - it's a very physical circuit. I had difficulty with the car in the early section of the race but at the pitstop, the car felt better. There were varying conditions, lot's of problems with backmarkers and generally people having their own race. Once Gerhard and Jean were out, with respect to David of course - he was pushing hard, the race was looking good." "It's going to be hot competition and Michael will be straining at the leash as he probably has been for the last two races and I know he'll be pretty fired up. We have three days testing here at Estoril to come and we've got a lot of things to try to make improvements to the car and we'll be hard to beat when he returns. I can promise a titanic battle over next three races."
Copyright 1994 & 2000 Mike Baldock