A look back at Britain: 1998

In the build up to this week’s British Grand Prix we are looking at classic races and moments from the famous event. This time we are looking at the 1998 edition where a controversial finish saw Michael Schumacher extraordinarily take the chequered flag whilst serving a 10 second stop-go penalty.

1998 British Grand Prix

Qualifying saw Mika Hakkinen take pole position by nearly half a second ahead Michael Schumacher, with teammate and home favourite David Coulthard disappointingly over a second away from pole position. It was later discovered that Coulthard’s engine wasn't running at full power and it wasn't just the set up problems that was initially thought to be the sole reason for the huge qualifying gap, inspiring confidence ahead of the race.

Race day looked set up to be hit by rain throughout the race, although the race started on a drying track with wet and dry patches throughout the circuit, leading to tricky intermediate conditions at the start.

Hakkinen, Schumacher and Coulthard all had good starts and lead away from the grid, with Jean Alesi having a great jumping from eighth on the grid to fourth place. The one loser from the start was the second Ferrari of Eddie Irvine, losing several positions and dropping to tenth by the end of the first lap. This did mean however that Irvine put on a show in the opening laps passing four cars on track by lap 15.

However the real talking point from the early point in the race was Coulthards pass on Michael Schumacher, which no doubt delighted the partisan crowd, as well as embarrassing Schumacher who had insulted Coulthard’s race craft early in the season.

At this point the rain was steadily increasing and the question was whether to switch to full wets or stay on intermediates, with most choosing to swap to full wets, apart from Coulthard who gambled on intermediates. This worked for a time, and Coulthard closed to within half a second of his teammate, but as the rain increased Hakkinen eked out an advantage again on his.

The race at

this point had pretty much settled down with Schumacher cut adrift in third with Irvine further down the road in fourth, but with rain still pouring the conditions became increasingly treacherous, and this proved to be the downfall of Coulthard, as he spun off on lap 38 trying to overtake a backmarker on worn intermediate tyres. The leader Hakkinen then had his own problems as he spun on lap 42, costing him 10 seconds of his now huge 49 second lead over Schumacher.

Hakkinen’s spin seemed to be the trigger for the safety car to come out, as he was the latest of several drivers to hit problems, with both Prost cars, Mika Salo’s Arrows and Jos Verstappen’s Stewart all hitting race ending aquaplaning issues. The safety car brought Schumacher a lot closer to the back of Hakkinen, cutting the gap from half a minute to only a few car lengths with only Fisichella’s Benetton between, ensuring a battle until the end of the race.

However Hakkinen’s earlier off had damaged his front wing leading to an easy pass for Schumacher. Adding insult to injury, the sun began to shine at Silverstone, and with increasingly dry weather it meant that Irvine was could close on a wounded Hakkinen, and if he passed him it would mean Schumacher would take the championship lead.

Although the possible late seemed to be the most dramatic part of the race, there was more yet to come. Ferrari were informed of a 10 second stop-go penalty for Schumacher for passing lapped Fisichella before permitted during the safety car period. Ferrari argued that they had not been informed in the given time limit for incidents, and it was unclear which penalty they had received. They therefore instructed Schumacher to come into the pits on the last lap to serve the penalty, and as he crossed the timing beam before serving any penalty it was clear that he had not served the whole penalty. It was clear the race had ended in controversy as the race ended, and nobody was sure of the true winner of the race.

Initially the stewards tried to impose just a 10 second time penalty on Schumacher, but as this could only be imposed on incidents in the last 12 laps of the race it couldn’t be imposed. The penalty was later rescinded entirely, in highly controversial manner, leading to all three race stewards resigning after the shambles of the incident and overhauls in the penalty system to ensure a similar incident couldn’t happen again.