1997 had been a difficult one for reigning World Champion Damon Hill going into the eleventh round in Hungary. Now driving for the vastly uncompetitive Arrows team led by Tom Walkinshaw, Hill languished towards the bottom of the driver’s standings with a solitary point to his name. The season was a battle between Hill’s former-team mate Jacques Villeneuve, and Michael Schumacher. The German, in his second season at Ferrari, led the Canadian by ten points and it was both of them who locked-out the front row, with Schumacher taking pole by just over a tenth of a second. Hill, making use of the advantage his car’s Bridgestone tyres had around the Hungaroring (a new rubber supplier to rival Goodyear, the first tyre war since 1991), amazed everyone by taking an incredible third position, half a second faster than sixth-placed Heinz-Harald Frentzen, the man who replaced Hill at Williams. The 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix was shaping up to be a cracker.
At the start, Villeneuve got a poor getaway from the dusty side of the track, and Hill breezed past into second place. After a handful of laps, both Hill and race leader Schumacher were leaving the rest of the pack behind, and the Arrows began to make gains on the Ferrari. At the beginning of lap eleven, Hill got a better run out of the final corner and got in Schumacher’s slipstream, and, in one of the ultimate ‘David v Goliath’ images in recent Grand Prix history, the plucky Yahama-powered Arrows got alongside the Ferrari, and Hill muscled past Schumacher to take the lead, and soon pulled away. Schumacher’s tyres required a change as early as lap 14, leaving both Williams cars to chase – or at least attempt to chase – the World Champion Hill. Villeneuve’s rubber blistered soon after his first stop, and could not keep up with the Arrows of Hill, whose Bridgestones stayed in a superior condition. As the leading Goodyear running cars faltered, Hill was able to build a lead that was as high as 35 seconds with just three laps to go. Then disaster.
A hydraulic problem caused the Arrows to slow dramatically, and the throttle began to fail. Hill could only muster second and third gears in the car, and Villeneuve ate into Hill’s commanding lead. Losing around thirty seconds in two laps, the Williams caught the Arrows on the final lap. As Hill jiggled the ailing Arrows around to get the car moving faster again, Villeneuve took to the grass and drove around Hill to take the lead. Heartbreak for Hill as Villeneuve eventually won by nine seconds. Despite such a disappointing end to a race he thoroughly deserved to win, Hill coasted over the line to finish second, with Sauber’s Johnny Herbert finishing an impressive third, ten seconds in-front of fourth-placed Schumacher. Ralf Schumacher was fifth, just two tenths of a second behind big brother at the finish, with Prost’s Shinji Nakano taking his best finish of the season with sixth.
The win meant Villeneuve was able to cut Schumacher’s championship lead to just three points, and help Williams reduce Ferrari’s lead at the top of the constructor’s table to two points.
To many, Damon Hill cemented his status as a top driver that day, a day which almost brought one of modern F1’s biggest surprise results. For Williams, it was the team’s 100th Grand Prix victory, but for Arrows, it was 299 races without a race win. How they must have wished the race was one lap shorter.
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