The F1 paddock headed to Jerez for the final round of the 1997 Formula One season with Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher leading the championship by a single point over Williams’s Jacques Villeneuve.
Qualifying for the race proved extraordinary. For the first time ever the fastest lap times of the top three drivers – Villeneuve, Schumacher and Heinz-Harold Frentzen in the second Williams – were exactly the same. Villeneuve qualified on pole by virtue of setting his lap time first.
This advantage for the pole-sitter did not last for long. Schumacher had a much better start than him and was in front by the time the field went into the first turn. With Frentzen also managing to get past Villeneuve, things looked to be going Schumacher’s way.
This was the case for the first 45 laps or so as Schumacher established a lead and kept ahead of Villeneuve after both rounds of pit stops.
However, after the second pit stop, Villeneuve looked to have more of an advantage over Schumacher, catching up to the back of the German at the end of lap 47. Schumacher’s Ferrari was dropping pace and looked to be suffering from some kind of problem, which helped Villeneuve to close up behind.
Lap 48 proved to be the one that decided the championship. Villeneuve took his chance and dived down the inside of the Ferrari at turn six. While the two were side by side, Schumacher turned in on Villeneuve, making contact with the Canadian’s left sidepod.
Villeneuve was able to carry on without any major damage while Schumacher went straight into the gravel trap and beached his Ferrari. He was out of the race in similar fashion to his collision with Damon Hill in the 1994 title decider at Adelaide.
Even though Villeneuve did carry on, his pace began to slow and he was being caught by the two McLarens of David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen.
Under what looked to be some kind of team order, Hakkinen went past Coulthard with a few laps to go. The Finn then went off in pursuit of his maiden grand prix victory with Coulthard still keeping tabs behind his teammate.
Coming into the Senna chicane on the final lap, Hakkinen took the lead with Villeneuve almost looking like he let the McLaren by. Coulthard also got past before the final corner. Any allegations of Williams and McLaren conspiring to fix the race result in some way were quashed after the race.
Either way, Mika Hakkinen took the chequered flag to claim his first win followed by Coulthard to give McLaren their first 1-2 in six years. Villeneuve completed the podium with his third-place finish, enough for him to be crowned world champion of 1997.
To complete this eventful tale, the FIA announced a fortnight after the race that Schumacher would be disqualified from the 1997 world championship for deliberately causing an avoidable collision. No further fines and penalties were imposed, allowing both Schumacher and Ferrari to start 1998 with a clean slate.
Villeneuve would remain at Williams for his title defence in 1998, while Schumacher looked to put the incident behind him and go again for another title charge at Ferrari.
Joshua Kerr
Roar Guru
I assume you're talking about Villeneuve? Because it wasn't really his fault that the Williams was uncompetitive in 1998 - it struggled with the Mecachrome-badged engine and the lack of an Adrian Newey-like figure in car design. His move to BAR in 1999 probably was a risk though. 11 retirements in the first 11 races. And his period at Sauber in 2005 where he qualified well at the Australian GP but couldn't transform that into points in the race.
AJ
Roar Rookie
Having said that, Schumacher did also get lucky in Canada, but his luck was not to the same degree as Villeneuve.
AJ
Roar Rookie
A lot went right for Villeneuve in this season. Hill's problems at the Hungarian Grand Prix were well known, which gifted Villeneuve an extra 4 points. But on top of this, Hakkinen had retirements due to engine failure in the lead at Britain and Austria which also helped Villeneuve. Olivier Panis was also on track to win in Argentina before he had car problems - another one of Villeneuve's wins. For the second half of the season, Villeneuve was getting upgrades to his car whilst Frentzen wasn't. If Frentzen had a better first 3 races (where he had 0 points to Villeneuve's 20), he may have been given more freedom and more faith in the team to challenge for the title. This is a driver that did get pole at Monaco in 1997, and if given equal cars with Villeneuve would've been faster than him in the second half of the season. Frentzen also showed that he could do well in cars that weren't the frontrunner - his 1999 campaign with Jordan should have had him level in the Championship with 2 races to go if his car doesn't blow up at the Nurburgring. Unfortunately for him, his career petered out after that. Everyone knows that what Schumacher did was not right at Jerez, but really, it shouldn't have been close enough in the Championship for this to have happened.
Mark Scarfe
Roar Guru
Unfortunately never had the longevity as others but that was his choice not threw not getting a competitive drive.
Joshua Kerr
Roar Guru
Well Adelaide 94 and Jerez 97 are certainly two title deciders where Michael caused controversy...
Joshua Kerr
Roar Guru
It seems their approach is to show a more recent race on a Saturday and a classic race on a Wednesday night. Best of both worlds. We'll see how it goes. The Italian press said afterwards that they couldn't accept Michael winning the championship if Villeneuve also didn't finish in the points as a result of this incident. They would rather Schumacher and Ferrari won the championship without controversy. Michael must have had some sort of problem because surely you don't take a drastic measure like that in normal circumstances with 22 laps left to go in the race! When I think of classics from the 1998 and 1999 seasons, Hakkinen victories don't really spring to mind! Now that could just be my relative lack of knowledge of that period...
Micko
Roar Rookie
Schumacher was always cynical. If he couldn't win fairly he'd do something dirty.
Jawad Yaqub
Roar Guru
So good to see F1 provide us all with these classic races in their entirety. Between this and the 1986 Australian Grand Prix, which I absolutely loved watching, we have two really epic title finales. This one, more so controversial and would have been more agonising for Ferrari to still be without a championship since 1979 (if you think their current drought is woeful). A unique first win too for Mika, which kind of flew under the radar given that the championship result was the more pressing matter at the time. Would love to see some more of his famous wins uploaded too across the '98 and '99 seasons.