1995 British Grand Prix

Heading into the eighth race of the season, Benetton driver Michael Schumacher was leading the Drivers' Championship with 46 points; ahead of Williams driver Damon Hill on 35, and the two Ferrari drivers, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger, on 26 and 17 points respectively. The Constructors' Championship was closer, with Benetton on 48 points leading Ferrari and Williams on 43 and 42 points respectively. Hill, on the other hand, had won the 1994 British Grand Prix and was eager to repeat the feat in front of his home fans. He had also set the fastest lap time in pre-event testing at Silverstone during the final week of June, almost a second in front of teammate David Coulthard, and a further 0.2 seconds ahead of Schumacher. The McLaren, Jordan, Footwork and Pacific teams also took part in these test sessions. Hill was also under some additional pressure going into the weekend, as his wife, Georgie, was due to give birth to their third child imminently. Morbidelli was kept on as the team's test driver, and returned to racing action at the later in the year. made his Formula One debut for the Footwork Arrows team, in place of Gianni Morbidelli. Pre-race discussion centred on the following year's driver line-up, with Schumacher rumoured to be moving to Ferrari to replace Berger, who was considering a move to Williams. Hill's future was also uncertain, as was his teammate David Coulthard's, due to the McLaren team possessing an option on his services for . Sauber driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen was also linked to a possible vacant position for 1996 in the Williams team. Schumacher's future plans dictated the rest of the driver market, due to his status as the reigning World Champion—and, indeed, the only such champion of all the contemporary drivers—and reputation as the best driver currently in Formula One. It was also reported that Schumacher's teammate, Johnny Herbert, was in imminent danger of losing his Benetton seat to test driver Jos Verstappen, who was available due to the collapse of the Simtek team after the and was contractually owed race drives by team principal Flavio Briatore. Despite taking a podium finish earlier in the year, Herbert had rarely been close to Schumacher's pace and had only completed two laps in the two previous Grands Prix. A potential new entry was also being discussed: the Japanese racing car constructor Dome was in the process of building a Formula One car with which to enter the World Championship in . 's Ligier car was equipped with power steering for the first time. 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 chassis's suspension geometry, and Mika Häkkinen's car was equipped with a more powerful version of its Mercedes V10 engine for Sunday's warm-up session and the race itself. Team principal Ron Dennis also re-hired experienced designer Steve Nichols, who had worked for the outfit in the 1980s, in the week before the race. Footwork also arrived with revised suspension, whilst the Jordan team ran with brake disc sensors on its car. Further down the field, the Forti team introduced the revised version of its FG01 chassis for Roberto Moreno. Lead driver Pedro Diniz had first driven the car in its revised specification at the preceding . The revised aerodynamic package included a higher nose and new sidepods. Both drivers also tested a new development of the Ford-Cosworth ED engine in practice. In the week leading up to the race, Williams chief designer Adrian Newey reignited the controversy over the similarities between the Benetton B195 and Ligier JS41 chassis, which had first flared up at the season-opening . Despite the fact that a Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) investigation had declared the JS41 legal earlier in the season, Newey stated that "as far as suspension geometry and aerodynamics are concerned, I'd say they are identical. [...] Taken to a logical conclusion, we'll be in an IndyCar position. It is very dangerous." As part of the Williams team's own preparations for the race, Hill tested a Williams FW17 equipped with brakes made from steel, rather than the standard carbon fibre, and was reputedly impressed by their performance. ==Practice and qualifying==

Two practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held from 09:30 to 11:15 local time on Friday, and an identically timed session was also held on Saturday. Each driver was limited to 23 laps of free practice per day. The qualifying period was split into two one-hour sessions; the first was held on Friday afternoon from 13:00 to 14:00 local time, with the second held on Saturday afternoon at the same time. The fastest time set by each driver from either session counted towards his final grid position. Each driver was limited to twelve laps per qualifying session. 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. took pole position for his home race for the second consecutive year. 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. Team principal Jean Todt, however, described lack of testing as "a feeble excuse" for the team's loss of form compared with earlier races in the season. Andrea Montermini did not take part in the session at all due to a failure of his car's brake master cylinder; the underfunded Pacific team lacked the resources to bring a spare car to the event. There was also frustration amongst the drivers and teams who felt that they had underperformed on Friday, and for Häkkinen and Irvine who had both been scheduled to run with more powerful engines which should have given an advantage in dry conditions. or watch it on television, were being short-changed as a result. FIA President Max Mosley confirmed that the current qualifying procedure was to be the subject of a review, with possible changes due to be introduced for the 1996 season. One-day qualifying was subsequently introduced from the 1996 Australian Grand Prix onwards. Qualifying classification ==Warm-up==

used a new-specification Mercedes engine to set the fastest time in the warm-up session. On Sunday morning, a pre-race warm-up session took place at 09:30 local time, and lasted for 30 minutes. It took place in dry weather conditions. He was followed in the timesheets by Hill, Coulthard, Alesi, Berger and Schumacher. ==Race==

made the best start, moving from sixth on the grid to second by the first corner. It began to rain half an hour before the start of the race but soon stopped, so that the track was almost entirely dry by 14:00, When the race started, Hill maintained his advantage into the first corner, whilst Alesi made a fast start to slot into second position ahead of Schumacher. Both drivers had previously been penalised for the same offence at the French Grand Prix, and also the . 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, from seventh place, and rejoined in 11th. Lap 15 also saw the first scheduled pit stop, as Coulthard, also held up by Alesi behind Schumacher, took on fresh fuel and tyres earlier than planned in a bid to move ahead of the Ferrari when it made its own visit to the pit lane. As he rejoined the race, Coulthard's Williams suffered an electronic failure that affected the car's throttle control when changing gears, but continued the race in ninth place regardless. The remaining two-stoppers made pit stops on laps 21 and 22: Herbert came in from third place and retained his position by rejoining ahead of Alesi and Coulthard; Blundell dropped from fourth to seventh, Gachot retained 16th; and Barrichello and Panis made their first scheduled stops, the Jordan dropping from seventh to eighth and the Ligier rejoining in 11th from ninth. Frentzen, Papis and the Minardi drivers also opted for a single-stop race; Papis and Martini's worn tyres allowing Panis to overtake them soon after his second stop. Hill made his own second stop on lap 41 with a 27-second lead over Schumacher and the two were almost level as Hill reached the end of the pit lane, but Schumacher's extra momentum allowed him to move ahead in the run to the Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel sequence of fast corners. The retirement of the two leaders promoted their teammates into their own battle for the lead; the two almost colliding at the same corner as Coulthard attempted to pass Herbert by making a lunge up the inside of his car, as Hill had done to Schumacher. Coulthard had not been informed about his stop-go penalty by the team, as they did not want to distract him, but he saw the penalty notification on one of the large television screens situated around the circuit. He passed Herbert on lap 49, but took his penalty two laps later and dropped to third position, behind Alesi. The Ferrari driver was still close behind Herbert, but cut his pace in the final laps as his 412T2's oil pressure began to fade. On the penultimate lap, Barrichello lined up his car to attempt a pass, but Blundell defended his position and the two collided: Barrichello crashed out, but Blundell was able to continue with a punctured left-rear tyre which allowed Panis to overtake him on the last lap. took the first win of his Formula One career. Thus Herbert took the chequered flag after 61 laps—at an average speed of —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. Panis finished fourth, ahead of Blundell, who managed to finish despite his car running on three wheels for the final lap. Frentzen finished a lap down and completed the points-scoring positions, forty seconds ahead of a close group comprising Martini, Salo and Boullion. Salo closed in on the Minardi driver late in the race after passing his teammate, but was edged onto the grass whilst attempting a pass on the Hangar Straight and spun through 360 degrees. Badoer finished a further ten seconds behind this group, having also been passed by Boullion after his final pit stop. Barrichello was classified in 11th place, ahead of Gachot, who took his first race finish since the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix three laps behind Herbert. ==Post-race==

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. In the post-race press conference, Herbert paid tribute to three people who had particularly helped the progress of his career: his wife, Becky; Peter Collins, of whom Herbert said that "he got me into F1 twice"; Alesi declared himself "very happy" with his second place, but admitted to "giving up" in the second half of the race, as he knew that overtaking Herbert or Coulthard when they were ahead of him would have been almost impossible. For Coulthard, his result was bittersweet: he was pleased to finish the race despite the failure of his car's electronics, but disappointed to lose an almost certain victory due to his pit-lane speeding penalty. A few days later, he described his race in a magazine column as "one of those disappointing days when everything goes wrong". 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 there, I think he'd have gone straight on into the gravel. He just came from nowhere. Even in front of your home crowd, I think you have to keep your temperament under control. It was more or less the same situation at Adelaide last year [the occasion of the 1994 Australian Grand Prix, in which a collision between the two settled the Drivers' Championship in Schumacher's favour], where he also tried to dive inside when there was no room." Hill was more cautious in his assessment of the incident, commenting that: "I thought I saw an opportunity that I could take an advantage of, but I'm afraid Michael is a harder man to pass than that, and we had an accident—which I would describe as 'a racing accident'". 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. The incident was subject to a stewards' investigation, which resulted in both drivers being given a severe reprimand and a warning that "future similar actions may result in severe penalties". The collision overshadowed the fact that, in the opinion of Roebuck, Benetton had again chosen a better race strategy than Williams, and that Schumacher would have had a comfortable lead had he not been stuck behind Alesi in the early stages of the race. The stewards also investigated this incident and gave Blundell a severe reprimand for his actions. In the week following the race, it was reported in several British newspapers that Frank Williams, founder and team principal of the Williams team, had visited the Benetton garage after the race where he had apologised to Schumacher and Briatore for the incident, during which he had allegedly referred to Hill as a "prat". On the same day, a Williams team spokesman stated that Hill was backed by Frank Williams and technical director Patrick Head, and that the incident was a natural part of motor racing. Frank Williams then issued a personal statement denying the newspaper reports. Hill also telephoned the owner of Formula One's commercial rights, Bernie Ecclestone, for advice on how to handle the situation. Ecclestone advised him to apologise to Schumacher, which Hill decided against. The crash was still the main talking point throughout the sport by the time of the , exacerbated by the fact that Hill's home race was immediately followed by Schumacher's. Race classification ==Championship standings after the race==

;Drivers' Championship standings ;Constructors' Championship standings • Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings. ==References==