1994 Monaco F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Monaco Grand Prix
Track: Monaco Circuit
Weather: sunny, dry, warm
Michael Schumacher won his sixth F1 World Championship race at the 1994 Monaco F1 GP today. The Benetton driver started from pole and won on the Monte Carlo circuit for the first time. It was also his fourth win of the season and the 11th win for the Benetton F1 team.
Berger leads, alone
Monaco arrived two weeks after Imola with the paddock still in mourning. Gerhard Berger had attended both Ratzenberger's and Senna's funerals, twenty-four hours apart, across time zones, and had quietly seen retirement loom. Instead he chose to keep going. On Wednesday 11 May, in the Salon Empire of the Hermitage, he announced that he was not stopping. "I have seen Ayrton on his death bed, but I have also seen him during the three seasons we spent together at McLaren. Confronting others and himself at the wheel, that's what he loved most in the world. It is the same for me." He would become, with Niki Lauda back as GPDA president, the senior voice in a re-formed drivers' association, Schumacher and Christian Fittipaldi joining as co-directors.
Williams entered a single car for Damon Hill in tribute to Senna. A Brazilian flag flew over the garage, the mechanics wore black armbands. Frank Williams, who had quietly received offers from a dozen drivers for the empty seat, wanted Riccardo Patrese, the Italian declined, and so the development driver David Coulthard was lined up to debut at Barcelona. Simtek entered a single car too, with "For Roland" painted on the cockpit. Jean Alesi was back from his neck injury, still in pain. JJ Lehto was struggling with the spine injuries from his January Silverstone crash.
Wendlinger's Thursday accident
At 11:27am on Thursday morning, in the closing minutes of the first free practice, Karl Wendlinger lost his Sauber-Mercedes braking at 280 km/h for the harbourside chicane. The car snapped sideways, grazed the right barrier, and struck the concrete protection containers with its right side. Wendlinger's helmet, which sat above the cockpit, hit one of them. He was unconscious by the time Watkins reached him.
At 16:45 the chief of the Saint-Roch hospital reanimation department in Nice, Professor Grimaud, announced that Wendlinger had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury with cerebral oedema, was in a coma on ventilation, and would either survive the next 48 hours or he would not. André de Cortanze, Sauber's technical director, told Frentzen he could not run. Peter Sauber withdrew both cars for the rest of the weekend. Mercedes board members, with Le Mans 1955 still in their corporate memory, were said to be relieved. The third near-fatal accident in eight days had brought the sport to a moment of decision.
Mosley's emergency reforms
On Friday afternoon, with Wendlinger fighting for his life ten miles away, Max Mosley convened a press conference with Bernie Ecclestone and Michel Boeri to announce a phased programme of mandatory safety reforms. Front-wing heights raised for Barcelona. Diffuser dimensions cut for Barcelona. Stepped underfloors brought forward to Hockenheim. Side head-protection structures and deformable cockpit zones for Canada. Airbox openings reduced for Canada. A 25kg minimum-weight increase for Canada. A 600bhp engine cap proposed for 1995 via mandated airflow restrictors.
Constructors howled. "It's impossible to do this in time!" Jean-Pierre Jabouille shouted. The team principals met at the Yacht Club to formulate alternatives and produced one concrete proposal, a 60 km/h pit lane speed limit, in response to Alboreto's loose wheel injuring three mechanics at Imola. They wanted the focus on circuit safety rather than the cars. Mosley dismissed this. "In the measure where the constructors have nothing else to propose, we impose our own decisions. The FIA had to take its responsibilities." Briatore, who would, in the days afterward, raise the prospect of a Spanish grand prix boycott, found Frank Williams and Ron Dennis on his side but Jean Todt, Giancarlo Minardi and Ken Tyrrell unwilling to risk the media backlash of a boycott. The matter was unresolved.
Lauda's GPDA returns, Schumacher's first pole
The drivers met at the ACM headquarters on Friday, 25 current drivers plus Lauda, Patrese, Giacomelli, Warwick, Alliot and Zanardi. Lauda became president by acclamation. The proposal of Alain Prost for the role was floated and dropped, too provocative toward the FIA, several drivers felt. Berger and Schumacher would serve as co-directors with Lauda; Christian Fittipaldi would speak for the smaller teams.
On the track, Schumacher took his first F1 pole position at 1m18.560s, over 1.4 seconds faster than Mansell's 1992 record. Häkkinen was a magnificent second on the McLaren-Peugeot, the Ferraris of Berger and Alesi third and fifth, Hill fourth on an under-confident Williams. Lehto qualified seventeenth, still in pain from his January injuries.
Race day: a minute's silence, two flags
Half an hour before the start, Brazilian and Austrian flags were painted at the front of the grid. The drivers gathered for a minute's silence; Christian Fittipaldi and Rubens Barrichello held a banner with Senna's portrait and the words "Adeus Ayrton." Then the race began.
It lasted barely a corner for Hill. Trying to outbrake Häkkinen into Sainte Dévote, he clipped the Finn's right front. The McLaren bounced into the barrier; Hill limped down to Mirabeau with his front wing torn off. Two corners later Martini also collected Morbidelli at the Loews entry. Four cars out within 200 metres of start. Schumacher disappeared up the hill in his usual fashion.
From there it was as soporific as Monaco at its most one-sided. Schumacher pulled out two seconds a lap on Berger for the first six laps, then settled into 1m21s consistency. The only real story was Brundle, who took advantage of cleaner pit work to leap from sixth to second by the final round of stops, and Berger, who lost time after slipping on Blundell's blown-engine oil at Sainte Dévote on lap 42 (Schumacher had narrowly avoided the gravel trap doing the same thing). Schumacher cruised to his fourth consecutive victory and the first Monaco win of his career; Brundle scored a fine second for McLaren-Peugeot's first podium with the new partnership; Berger inherited third for Ferrari's fourth podium in four races. Andrea de Cesaris brought the Jordan home a brilliant fourth on his comeback weekend. Alesi was a brave fifth with cervical pain, Michele Alboreto sixth, his first point in two years.
Two crowns, one fragile
The royal box was sombre. Prince Albert handed Schumacher the trophy. The hymns were played, the flags hung. The champagne was not opened. Schumacher led the championship 40-10 over Berger. Williams stood fifth in the constructors' with seven points, a position the world champion team had not seen in five years. Patrick Head, in private, was reportedly furious with Hill for an unforced first-corner error in the most important race of his career.
Later that evening, at the Sporting d'Été gala, Briatore and Schumacher were the guests of honour. The 170th Ford-Cosworth victory was marked. Schumacher, with the slightly bewildered candour that was becoming his trademark: "When the first win came, in 1967 at Zandvoort with Jim Clark, I wasn't even born!" Then the lights dimmed and a short film about Ayrton Senna was played. Nobody, that night, mentioned Karl Wendlinger by name. He would emerge from his coma three weeks later, and would not return to a Formula 1 car in 1994. The sport was, that May, broken, and inside the Yacht Club on Monday morning, Flavio Briatore was already mobilising the constructors against the very safety package his fellow drivers had just demanded.
Classification 1994 Monaco F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:21.076 min by Michael Schumacher (Benetton B194) in lap 35
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