1995 Monaco Grand Prix

There were two driver changes going into the event: McLaren driver Nigel Mansell was replaced by the team's test driver, Mark Blundell , and Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger was replaced by Williams test driver and reigning International Formula 3000 champion Jean-Christophe Boullion . Mansell's departure was the main talking point prior to the beginning of the race meeting, as it brought the 1992 World Champion's troubled relationship with McLaren to an end after just two races with the team. Mans...

Wendlinger had crashed heavily in practice for the previous year's Monaco Grand Prix , sustaining a serious head injury from which it took the rest of the season for him to recover. Since rejoining Sauber at the beginning of the current season, he had struggled to match his pre-accident form, lapping several seconds per lap slower than teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the first four Grands Prix. [ 7 ] Sauber released a statement clarifying that Wendlinger had not been sacked, and that he would ...

The state of the Simtek team's finances was also a major topic of interest. On the Thursday before the race weekend, team principal Nick Wirth held a press conference in which he admitted that the outfit faced imminent closure unless it received money that had been promised by various sponsors. [ 11 ] Wirth admitted that Simtek faced a budget shortfall of several million dollars needed to complete the season, part of which was due to him being the victim of "a broken deal". He also pledged to ar...

Due to the configuration of the Circuit de Monaco , with its low average speed and abundance of low-speed corners, allied to the low-grip nature of the public road surface, the teams all set their cars up to produce the maximum amount of downforce and mechanical grip possible. Ferrari introduced a revised rear wing and diffuser design for the 412T2 chassis, allowing more space for downforce-generating winglets around the rear bodywork. The team also introduced two new suspension configurations, ...

Alesi set the pace in Thursday free practice, which took place in bright and sunny weather conditions, with a time of 1:25.457. Schumacher and Hill were second and third, separated from their teammates by the two improved McLarens, with Häkkinen ahead of the returning Blundell. Berger was over two seconds slower than Alesi with the ninth-fastest lap time. [ 1 ] Schumacher was unhappy with the handling of his car, and so the rear end of the B195 was stripped down for a precautionary check before ...

"Here, unlike most of the tracks, the driver contributes 60 per cent of the result against 40 for the car. This is because the qualities of the chassis are not so important on these twists and turns. Guts are more important."

Towards the back of the Thursday time sheet, Schiattarella and Verstappen shared the former's chassis to set the 20th and 19th-fastest times respectively, as Verstappen's gearbox was still refusing to run smoothly. Schiattarella spun at La Rascasse and attempted to execute a spin-turn at the blind entry to the corner, almost collecting Roberto Moreno 's Forti in the process; he was given a $20,000 fine, suspended for three races, for "creating a very dangerous situation". [ 16 ] [ 19 ] Verstappe...

After taking Friday off – a feature of the event timetable unique to Monaco – the drivers returned to action on Saturday in bright and warm conditions. [ 1 ] Hill set the pace with a time of 1:23.468, which was the fastest lap of the weekend thus far. [ 6 ] He was almost 0.8 seconds ahead of Alesi, who in turn led Coulthard, Häkkinen, Berger and Panis. [ 1 ] Schumacher was back in seventh place after damaging his car's suspension in a collision with Frentzen exiting Casino Square, restricting hi...

The main drama of the day occurred after the practice session had ended. Inoue had spun and stalled his Footwork, which was being towed back to the pit lane by a recovery vehicle when it was struck from behind by the Renault Clio safety car – which was being taken on quick demonstration laps of the circuit in the hands of rally driver Jean Ragnotti , with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile 's press delegate as passenger – in the middle of the Piscine complex. The impact was sufficient...

"When Michael did his quick lap early in the session, I thought Benetton was seriously back in the groove again and we would be in trouble, but it all unfolded for me. My last run was the nearest to a perfect lap I think I have ever produced. Now I've got my sixth pole and I want to follow that with the sixth win for the Hill family at Monaco."

Behind the two leading runners, Ferrari's challenge for pole position faded during the final session. Alesi's car ground to a halt on his first out-lap of the session after losing hydraulic pressure, and he had to share Berger's chassis for the remainder of qualifying. This forced Berger to hurry through his planned programme, making three runs instead of four, before handing his car over to his teammate. The extensive adjustments required to tailor the car's pedal system from Berger to Alesi's ...

Barrichello, outqualified by Irvine at every event thus far in 1995, set the 11th-fastest time, ahead of Panis – who complained of heavy traffic – and Morbidelli. Frentzen, like Alesi, was scheduled to take over his teammate's car after his own proved too heavily damaged to repair, but the Sauber team's programme was interrupted when Boullion crashed, also at Massanet. Frentzen thus failed to set a time and dropped to 14th on the grid, whilst Boullion had improved his time by three seconds befor...

Coulthard, Berger and Alesi's cars had been damaged beyond immediate repair; all three were thus forced to race their teams' spare cars, vindicating Ferrari's customary Monaco practice of bringing an additional car for each driver. [ 14 ] Berger's spare car, however, was fitted with an earlier-specification engine that did not produce quite as much power as his race car or Alesi's spare car, whilst the throttle on Coulthard's car was not fully calibrated in the rush to ready it for the restarted...

At the restart, Hill and Schumacher again held their positions, whilst Coulthard led the more circumspect Ferraris through Sainte Dévote, with Alesi jumping ahead of Berger. [ 29 ] On this occasion there were no major incidents, although Katayama sustained light damage to his car's front wing as a result of a brush with Morbidelli. [ 11 ] As the drivers completed the first lap, Hill led by 0.5 seconds from Schumacher, [ 29 ] who was followed in turn by Coulthard, Alesi, Berger, Herbert, Häkkinen...

This was the third event to take place with electronic sensors monitoring every car for jump-starts, and at this stage of the race, six drivers (Barrichello, Brundle, Montermini, Frentzen, Morbidelli and Panis) were issued with ten-second stop-go penalties for this offence. [ 29 ] [ 32 ] [ 33 ] [ 34 ] [ 35 ] [ 36 ] [ 37 ] All except Montermini came in promptly to serve their penalties – some even having to form a queue in the penalty area – but the Pacific driver failed to pit within the stipula...

The incident between Inoue and the safety car in practice was referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council , which met one month after the race. The ACM received no punishment for the incident, and negotiated the payment of damages to Footwork directly with the team. [ 39 ]

43°44′4.74″N 7°25′16.8″E  /  43.7346500°N 7.421333°E  / 43.7346500; 7.421333