Why the 1997 European Grand Prix still divides opinion

Jacques Villeneuve won the 1997 World Championship at Jerez after finishing third in the European Grand Prix, but the race is remembered for his collision with Michael Schumacher. Mika Hakkinen won for McLaren, the first Grand Prix victory of his career. It was the last World Championship race held at Jerez and the last season finale to take place in Europe.

Why was the title still open going into Jerez?

Michael Schumacher led the drivers' championship with 78 points, one ahead of Jacques Villeneuve on 77. Two drivers were still in contention despite Schumacher driving what was perhaps not even the second-fastest car on the grid. Villeneuve had won two more races than Schumacher, which meant that a tie on points would have given him the title.

Williams had already secured the constructors' title before the race, with 118 points against Ferrari's 100. Even if Ferrari had finished first and second, while both Williams cars failed to score, the Williams team would still have held the lead.

Villeneuve needed to finish in the points and ahead of Schumacher to be champion. Schumacher would have taken the title by finishing ahead of Villeneuve, or if Villeneuve failed to score at all. Points were awarded down to sixth place.

The teams used the weeks after Japan to test. Williams, Benetton, Sauber, Jordan and McLaren ran at Silverstone, with Williams, Sauber and Jordan working on 1998-spec cars. Arrows tested wet-weather tyres at Magny-Cours, and Prost worked at Catalunya for Bridgestone and also tested its 1998-specification car. Ferrari remained at Suzuka to test an electronic differential that Irvine had used at the previous race.

Originally planned as the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril, the race was moved after the circuit's management ran into financial difficulties. It was added after Japan because Renault did not want its last Formula One race to be held in Japan. The Jerez circuit measures 4.428 km (2.751 mi).

Villeneuve took the title from third place, and the collision at Jerez still divides opinion.

Practice and qualifying at Jerez

Four practice sessions were held, two on Friday and two on Saturday morning. Olivier Panis set the fastest time in the first two, 1 minute and 22.735 seconds, one-tenth ahead of Damon Hill, with Villeneuve and Rubens Barrichello third and fourth. Coulthard was quickest in the final two sessions at 1:20.738, and Hakkinen was second.

The Friday sessions ran from 11:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 14:00 CEST, and the Saturday sessions from 09:00 to 09:45 and 10:15 to 11:00. Panis slipped to fourth in the later running, with Berger's best time one-tenth of a second behind him. Hakkinen and Coulthard set the fifth and eighth-fastest times, with Frentzen and Alesi between them, and Stewart's Jan Magnussen was in the leading group.

Qualifying lasted one hour, with each driver allowed up to twelve timed laps. Cars were timed by TAG Heuer to a thousandth of a second, and the session ended with three drivers on the same lap time, the first time that had happened in the championship's history.

How did the pole position go to Villeneuve?

Villeneuve set 1:21.072 fourteen minutes into the session, and Schumacher matched that time exactly fourteen minutes later. Frentzen then posted the same time with nine minutes left, so the order in which the times were set decided the grid.

Under the regulations, drivers with equal times were ranked by the order in which they set them. Villeneuve took pole, with Schumacher second and Frentzen third. Hill, the reigning World Champion in his Arrows, took fourth with 1:21.130, 0.058 seconds behind the leading three, after slowing for yellow flags caused by an incident involving Ukyo Katayama's Minardi.

Villeneuve's pole was the last by a Canadian driver until Lance Stroll took one at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix.

The warm-up and a start without trouble

The half-hour warm-up was incident-free. Hakkinen was fastest at 1:23.016, with Berger second and Panis third. Behind them came Coulthard, Villeneuve and Herbert, with Schumacher, Frentzen, Nakano and Hill completing the top ten. Most teams ran the soft-compound tyres, although Jordan chose the harder compound.

Under dry, sunny skies, the race started at 14:00 CET. Just before the start a blue liquid came out of Villeneuve's Williams, but it did not affect the car during the race, and Schumacher got the better start and took the lead by the first corner.

How did the race develop before the collision?

Schumacher's getaway was better than Villeneuve's, and he was in front by the first corner. He led 40 of the first 47 laps. Frentzen overtook Villeneuve for second, and then let him back past on lap eight under the orders of the Williams team.

Diniz spun and stalled on lap 12, bringing an early end to his race. Schumacher made his first stop on lap 22 and Villeneuve followed a lap later, with both keeping their positions. The McLarens swapped places during the first round of stops, with Coulthard leading Hakkinen and Frentzen dropping to fifth.

Villeneuve closed up on Schumacher after the second round of stops on laps 43 and 44. The order at the front stayed the same, but the gap was getting smaller, and the stage was set for the closing laps.

Berger was in fourth and closing on Villeneuve as the race moved into its later stages, and the McLarens were not far ahead of the Williams. The pit windows had created a tight final third of the race, with every driver watching the lap times of those around him.

The collision at the Dry Sac corner

Going into lap 48, Villeneuve was less than a second behind Schumacher. He tried a move at the sharp, right-hand Dry Sac corner, going in deeper than Schumacher and taking the inside line, and for a moment he was ahead on the track when Schumacher turned in on him.

The right-front wheel of Schumacher's Ferrari struck the left radiator pod of Villeneuve's Williams. The contact ended Schumacher's race, while Villeneuve carried on, slower than before because the mounts for his battery had been damaged. There were 22 laps remaining at the time of the incident.

Martin Brundle, commentating alongside Murray Walker, saw immediately that Schumacher's move had been deliberate. Jacques Laffite, watching on French television, reacted angrily and called Schumacher an idiot on air. ITV's pit lane reporter James Allen said the onboard footage showed Schumacher twitching his steering wheel left before turning right into Villeneuve.

Villeneuve described the hit as very hard and said the car had felt strange afterwards. He said that he had not fought back, because it was better to let the two McLarens through and win the World Championship. He called it a good exchange. He added that, had he known Berger was behind, he would have let him through so the veteran could finish his final race on the podium.

Damage to his battery mounts slowed him, and both McLarens passed him before the flag. Hakkinen had regained second place from Coulthard under team orders, and Villeneuve's Williams could no longer match the pace. The collision had settled the title battle without a further contact.

The finishing order at Jerez

The final margin between Villeneuve and Berger was 0.116 seconds, and Berger, who had won 10 times, finished fourth in his last Grand Prix. Berger had been closing on Villeneuve but did not pass him before the line. Hakkinen's win was the first by a Finnish driver in 12 years, since Keke Rosberg's 1985 victory in Australia, and it was McLaren's first one-two since the 1991 Japanese Grand Prix. Ukyo Katayama also made his final start.

Villeneuve's podium was the only one in 1997 that did not come with a win, since his other seven podiums that year were all victories. Ferrari stayed second in the constructors' table, while Frentzen became the runner-up in the drivers' standings after Schumacher's disqualification. The race was also the last Grand Prix on slick tyres until the 2009 Australian Grand Prix, because grooved tyres were used from 1998 to 2008.

What did the FIA decide after the race?

On 11 November 1997 the FIA disqualified Schumacher from the championship, an unprecedented step. He lost second place to Frentzen but kept his race victories and other results, and he was also told to take part in a road-safety campaign in 1998.

Before the race Max Mosley had promised penalties for anyone who tried to influence the outcome of the championship. Villeneuve and Schumacher had hardly battled directly before Jerez, and the race stewards reviewed the video and judged the collision a racing incident, taking no further action at the time.

Schumacher had been summoned to a disciplinary hearing, and he accepted the decision and admitted he had made a mistake. Max Mosley, the FIA president, said the panel had found the actions deliberate but not premeditated. Ferrari escaped any sanction, even though Article 123 of the International Sporting Code makes an entrant responsible for the acts of its driver. That rule had never been invoked for a driving incident, and the World Council decided not to use it, which meant Ferrari kept its place in the standings.

Questions also remained about the stewards at Jerez, who had initially dismissed the collision as a racing incident. Critics argued that they had failed in their duty, and no public sanction followed.

How did the media react to Schumacher?

German newspapers were among the many across Europe that criticised Schumacher, with Bild saying he had lost both the title and his reputation for fair play. Bild also argued that he had wanted to take Villeneuve out of the race. A German television poll of 63,081 fans found that 28 percent no longer felt they could support him.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine described him as a reckless driver without honour, and it warned that a monument was starting to crack. The reaction in Italy was just as harsh. The daily l'Unita said Schumacher ought to be sacked for bringing shame on Italian sport, and it suggested he should face charges in a Spanish court.

Former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn later recalled that Schumacher at first believed Villeneuve was to blame, but once he had seen the footage he realised his own error. Another view was that Villeneuve had entered the corner too quickly and would have run wide without Schumacher's contact.

In 2009 Schumacher said he would change several things if he could relive his career, and he named Jerez 1997 among them. Villeneuve later admitted he would never have made that corner without the push.