Michael Schumacher, having started 7th, ended the first lap in 2nd position, and was challenging
Villeneuve in the
Williams for the lead. However, Schumacher, in the spare
Ferrari, was unable to stay with the leader and was starting to slow the cars behind him. By lap 13, the gap between him and Villeneuve was approximately 20 seconds, and a train of cars consisting to
David Coulthard,
Jean Alesi,
Mika Häkkinen,
Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and
Johnny Herbert was behind him. His lap times were approximately 1:26 while Villeneuve's was 1:22. In this high tyre wearing race, especially for the
Goodyear tyres, Irvine failed to let Panis through, and thus allowing Jean Alesi and Michael Schumacher to catch him up. When Irvine finally yielded on lap 57, the gap between Panis and Villeneuve was back up to 16.1 seconds. Irvine later received a
stop-go penalty for his actions. After Panis cleared the traffic, he was lapping 1.5 to 2 seconds faster than the leader and managed to close the gap to less than 6 seconds by the end of the race, but it was too late and Villeneuve took his 3rd victory of the season. This was Panis's final podium finish in Formula One. == Classification ==