1995 British Grand Prix

There was one driver change going into the event: the Footwork team's lead driver, Gianni Morbidelli , was replaced by compatriot Massimiliano Papis , an International Formula 3000 race winner who had also been the test driver for Team Lotus in 1994, before the outfit withdrew from the sport ahead of the 1995 season. Papis brought valuable sponsorship from Altea , a tie manufacturer, to the underfunded team, which supplemented the income already being provided by his pay driver teammate, Taki In...

Several teams had made modifications to their cars in preparation for the event. Ferrari made changes to the 412T2 chassis's sidepods to improve airflow around the tyres, and reverted to a diffuser design used earlier in the season. The Ligier team had Martin Brundle 's car fitted with power steering for the first time and he chose to use it for the race, but teammate Olivier Panis , who had run with the system earlier in the season, decided against it. McLaren revised its troubled MP4/10B chass...

"That final run was more like how I knew it could be done. Just a question of digging a bit deeper a taking a few more risks. It got a bit sideways here and there, and I used too much kerb at the exit of the last corner, but there's no way you can lift even for a fraction of a second. You just have to keep your foot in it and hope that you don't get the car completely on the grass. After my fastest lap, I could see that I was P1 on the huge television screen alongside the circuit, and thought th...

Schumacher set the pace in Friday free practice, which took place in dry and cloudy weather conditions, with a time of 1:29.238. Hill was less than four hundredths of a second behind, ahead of Alesi, Coulthard, Herbert and Berger; the drivers from the top three teams in the Constructors' Championship thus filled the top six positions. [ 1 ] Despite his fastest time, Schumacher was unhappy with the handling of his Benetton, reporting more understeer than had been present in pre-event testing at t...

Weather conditions for Friday qualifying were dry and sunny, albeit blustery, which meant that drivers had to cope with strong crosswinds in the circuit's many high-speed corners. [ 3 ] The session was marked by an intense fight for pole position between championship protagonists Schumacher and Hill, which was watched by a crowd of 37,000 spectators. [ 3 ] Schumacher initially set the pace with a time of 1:29.151, which he later improved to 1:28.387. Hill initially struggled to match his rival's...

Saturday free practice took place in mixed weather conditions: the session was initially dry, but was then hit by a rain shower which dampened it somewhat; the times were thus slower and more spread out down the field than the previous day. [ 1 ] Schumacher set the fastest time of 1:31.390, and said that he believed that his car's handling was much improved compared with its performance on Friday. [ 1 ] [ 6 ] He was followed by Alesi, Coulthard, Herbert, Panis and Frentzen. [ 1 ] Hill was left i...

"A lot of TV networks have realised that qualifying can be a highlight of the weekend. We had 30 countries taking live feed from Silverstone and the viewers were sitting there watching nothing. We have to do something about that and it will be discussed by the F1 commission. There are two potential solutions. One is to have an aggregate of the Friday and Saturday times, meaning that teams have to perform regardless, and the second is to have qualifying on Saturday only. It is just my opinion, bu...

It continued to rain throughout Saturday's qualifying session; the slower conditions meant that none of the top 24 drivers could improve upon their times from the previous day, setting the order of the starting grid and guaranteeing Hill pole position. [ 3 ] [ 6 ] Only Salo and Montermini's times counted for their starting positions: the Tyrrell driver set the fourth-fastest time of the session, albeit 12 seconds slower than Moreno's dry-weather Friday time, to take 23rd position on the grid; Mo...

As Hill extended his lead, the stewards informed the Jordan and Ligier teams that Barrichello and Panis had jumped the start , for which they were served with ten-second stop-go penalties . [ 29 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Both drivers had previously been penalised for the same offence at the French Grand Prix, and also the Monaco Grand Prix . [ 28 ] [ 33 ] Panis took his penalty on lap 12 and dropped from 11th to 14th position; Barrichello made a pit stop to serve his identical penalty three laps later, fr...

Schumacher slowly began to reduce Hill's lead, which had grown to 19.5 seconds. [ 29 ] Salo made a pit stop on lap 19, dropping behind Papis and the Minardi drivers, but gained a position on Boullion when the Sauber driver stopped on the next lap. [ 1 ] By this stage Häkkinen and Berger had risen to fourth and fifth respectively, but both retired on lap 21: Häkkinen's McLaren suffering a progressive electronic problem which caused its hydraulic system to fail; Berger pulling off the track shortl...

On new tyres, Hill began to reduce Schumacher's nine-second lead, but after a few laps Schumacher began to ease away again as he had a lighter fuel load than the Williams. It became apparent to the teams, as the race approached half-distance, that Schumacher had opted for a one-stop strategy and that both he and Hill only had one stop remaining each. [ 37 ] Frentzen, Papis and the Minardi drivers also opted for a single-stop race; Papis and Martini's worn tyres allowing Panis to overtake them so...

Schumacher and Hill now had similar fuel loads, but Hill had a fresh set of tyres and immediately began pressuring Schumacher, quickly reducing the gap to less than half-a-second. On lap 46, Hill attempted a passing manoeuvre at Stowe corner, but was unable to complete it, due to the presence of Boullion's lapped Sauber. [ 29 ] Further around the lap, Hill tried again, diving up the inside of Schumacher at the entry to the Priory left-hander, but Schumacher turned in to take the racing line and ...

Thus Herbert took the chequered flag after 61 laps—at an average speed of 195.682 kilometres per hour (121.591 mph) [ 1 ] —to win his first Formula One race at his 74th attempt, a result that also moved him from sixth to fourth in the Drivers' Championship. Alesi and Coulthard completed the podium, moving Ferrari ahead of Williams in the battle for second place in the Constructors' Championship. [ 1 ] Panis finished fourth, ahead of Blundell, who managed to finish despite his car running on thre...

"The feeling I got here was fantastic, especially to do it here in England, my own country. The support I got from the fans was fantastic, and I realise now what Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill meant when they talked about it. As soon as I was in the lead, the crowd starting waving Union Jacks all the way round the circuit, but I just concentrated on the job. I was thinking about the car and everything that could go wrong in the last ten laps. But it all kept going. I should have had a bet on mysel...

Herbert's maiden Formula One victory was very popular amongst the spectators and team personnel, as not only was it his home race, but also because it came after a series of setbacks earlier in his career, not least a serious accident in an International Formula 3000 race at Brands Hatch in 1988 that left him with severe foot injuries which threatened his racing career. [ 45 ] In the post-race press conference , Herbert paid tribute to three people who had particularly helped the progress of his...

The majority of media attention, however, was focussed on the aftermath of the collision between Schumacher and Hill on lap 46. Tension between the two had already been intensified by an incident during the French Grand Prix, where Schumacher had accused Hill of brake-testing him. [ 48 ] After the crash, Schumacher blamed Hill, saying that: "I think what Damon did was both stupid and totally unnecessary. There was no room for two cars there, and it's not an overtaking place. If I hadn't been the...

Similarly, BBC commentator and former driver, Jonathan Palmer , said that Hill's manoeuvre was the result of "a rush of blood to the head". [ 50 ] Journalist Joe Saward was amongst those who speculated, however, that Schumacher had played a role in the collision by taking a wider line into the Priory corner than usual, and thus encouraging Hill to attempt the manoeuvre. [ 51 ] The incident was subject to a stewards' investigation, which resulted in both drivers being given a severe reprimand and...

52°4′43″N 1°1′1″W  /  52.07861°N 1.01694°W  / 52.07861; -1.01694