2000 Spanish F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results

Event: Spanish Grand Prix
Track: Catalunya Circuit

Weather: dry, warm, sunny

Mika HAKKINEN won his 15th F1 World Championship race at the 2000 Spanish F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from 2nd on the grid and won at the Circuit de Catalunya after Michael Schumachers Ferrari suffered a slow pit stop. It was the 125th win for the McLaren F1 team and Coulthards return to racing after a fatal plane crash five days earlier.

Coulthard's plane crash overshadows the weekend

Five days before the Spanish Grand Prix, David Coulthard nearly died. On 2 May 2000, the private Learjet flying him and his fiancee Heidi Wichlinski to Nice from Farnborough for a pre-race training week suffered a fuel-supply failure on approach to Lyon. The pilot and co-pilot managed to guide the aircraft into a wheat field but were killed on impact. Coulthard, Wichlinski and physio Andy Matthews walked away from the wreckage. The Scot travelled to Barcelona wearing a neck brace, took his 4th place on the grid on Saturday, and drove a race his team-mate would win.

Coulthard's composure that weekend became one of the defining moments of his career. He answered questions about the crash for hours in the paddock, spoke publicly about the pilots' deaths, and then delivered a Grand Prix that would end on the podium.

Schumacher takes pole, Hakkinen takes the race

On Saturday afternoon Michael Schumacher continued Ferrari's pole-position momentum with a 1:20.974 lap, 0.078 seconds clear of Hakkinen and half a second clear of team-mate Rubens Barrichello. Coulthard qualified fourth despite a neck he could not turn to his left, and the front two rows lined up as another Ferrari-versus-McLaren duel.

The race turned on a slow Ferrari pit stop. Schumacher led the first 22 laps under McLaren pressure, then came in for his first stop and lost more than a second and a half to a stuck rear-left wheel. Hakkinen inherited the lead when he stopped one lap later, and although Schumacher chased hard through the middle stint, another problem, this time a scheduled tyre-pressure issue that flat-spotted his fronts on lap 40, effectively removed the Ferrari from the fight. Hakkinen won by 16 seconds. Coulthard held on to second, driving the second half of the race under pain-management. Barrichello took third for Ferrari, ahead of Ralf Schumacher's Williams-BMW and a dispirited Michael Schumacher, who could only manage fifth.

Ferrari's season stumble begins

For Ferrari, the second consecutive race without a Michael Schumacher podium was the paddock story of the weekend. The German's 5th place, two points, on a circuit where Ferrari had qualified on pole, exposed a car whose out-and-out pace was still title-winning but whose reliability and pit-stop execution were now on trial. Ross Brawn told the Italian press after the race that "we know exactly where we made the mistakes today, and we know how to fix them." Ferrari would have four weeks until Monaco to prove it.

Frentzen took sixth for Jordan, the highest ranking BAR-Honda result of the year belonged to Ricardo Zonta in eighth, and Nick Heidfeld's Prost broke down early on his fourth Grand Prix start. Jenson Button, having scored points in his last two races, retired on lap 43 with a broken driveshaft, ending his early Williams-BMW momentum for the moment.

Championship fallout: McLaren cut Schumacher's lead

Hakkinen's ten points and Coulthard's six pulled McLaren-Mercedes to within four points of Ferrari in the constructors' championship after five rounds. Schumacher's two-point haul dropped his drivers' lead over Coulthard from 16 to 12, with Hakkinen five behind Coulthard on 20. The season that had opened with three Ferrari victories from three had turned, in the space of two weeks, into a properly contested world championship. McLaren's pace had never been the issue; their reliability finally seemed to have followed.

Classification 2000 Spanish F1 GP

Pos	#	Driver	Constructor	Car & Engine	Grid	Laps	Led	Time	Pts
1	1	MikaHäkkinen	McLaren	McLaren MP4/15 Mercedes FO 110	2	65	27	1:33:55.390	10
2	2	DavidCoulthard	McLaren	McLaren MP4/15 Mercedes FO 110	4	65		1:34:11.456+16.066s	6
3	4	RubensBarrichello	Ferrari	Ferrari F2000Ferrari 049	3	65		1:34:24.502+29.112s	4
4	9	RalfSchumacher	Williams	Williams FW22BMW E41	5	65		1:34:32.701+37.311s	3
5	3	MichaelSchumacher	Ferrari	Ferrari F2000Ferrari 049	1	65	38	1:34:43.373+47.983s	2
6	5	Heinz-HaraldFrentzen	Jordan	Jordan EJ10Mugen-Honda MF301H	8	65		1:35:17.315+1:21.925	1
7	17	MikaSalo	Sauber	Sauber C19Petronas SPE-04A	12	64		+1 lap
8	23	RicardoZonta	BAR	BAR 002Honda RA000E	16	64		+1 lap
9	11	GiancarloFisichella	Benetton	Benetton B200Playlife FB02	13	64		+1 lap
10	12	AlexanderWurz	Benetton	Benetton B200Playlife FB02	18	64		+1 lap
11	7	EddieIrvine	Jaguar	Jaguar R1Cosworth CR-2	9	64		+1 lap
12	6	JarnoTrulli	Jordan	Jordan EJ10Mugen-Honda MF301H	7	64		+1 lap
13	8	JohnnyHerbert	Jaguar	Jaguar R1Cosworth CR-2	14	64		+1 lap
14	20	MarcGené	Minardi	Minardi M02Fondmetal RV10	20	63		+2 laps
15	21	GastónMazzacane	Minardi	Minardi M02Fondmetal RV10	21	63		+2 laps
16	15	NickHeidfeld	Prost	Prost AP03Peugeot A20	19	62		+3 laps
17	10	JensonButton	Williams	Williams FW22BMW E41	10	61		Engine
DNF	19	JosVerstappen	Arrows	Arrows A21Supertec FB02	11	25		Gearbox
DNF	22	JacquesVilleneuve	BAR	BAR 002Honda RA000E	6	21		Hydraulics
DNF	14	JeanAlesi	Prost	Prost AP03Peugeot A20	17	1		Collision
DNF	18	Pedrode la Rosa	Arrows	Arrows A21Supertec FB02	22	1		Collision
DNF	16	PedroDiniz	Sauber	Sauber C19Petronas SPE-04A	15	0		Spun off

Fastest lap: 1:24.470 min. by Mika Hakkinen

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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