1994 Canadian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Canadian Grand Prix
Track: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Weather: overcast, mostly dry, brief light rain
Michael Schumacher won his seventh F1 World Championship race at the 1994 Canadian F1 GP today. The Benetton driver started from pole and won on the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve for the first time. It was also his fifth win of the season and the 12th win for the Benetton F1 team.
Mansell to Williams, Wendlinger awake
Montreal arrived with one piece of welcome news and one piece of paddock theatre. In Nice, Karl Wendlinger had emerged from his coma in the first days of June without neurological damage. Sauber reactivated its second car for Andrea de Cesaris in time for Canada. Across the Atlantic, Frank Williams, having failed to lure Barrichello, Frentzen, Patrese, Warwick or Boutsen as a Senna replacement, had reluctantly opened talks with Nigel Mansell. The 1992 champion, in his second IndyCar season with Newman-Haas, had asked Carl Haas for permission to skip the French round and drive a Williams at Magny-Cours, partly because Penske was dominating CART and partly because Bernie Ecclestone, watching F1's post-Senna TV ratings collapse, was urging the move from behind the scenes. The deal would close before Canada was done.
The week's third story was the FIA's airbox-pressure ban. The dynamic ram-air system above the cockpits was estimated to be worth 5% engine power; Mosley ordered it disabled at Montreal, leaving each constructor to design its own opening to vent the pressure. Most cut a longitudinal slit along the engine cover's spine. Ferrari, with their wider V12, instead cut four small lateral apertures at the airbox base, and Renault's Bernard Dudot accused the Scuderia of using these openings as a Venturi to increase rather than reduce intake pressure. Alesi took provisional pole on Friday at 1m26.277s, the Italian crowd in raptures; on Saturday morning Charlie Whiting ordered Ferrari to recut the openings, and Alesi's top speed dropped from 306 km/h to 294 km/h on the day-old layout. Schumacher took pole on Saturday afternoon at 1m26.178s, 99 thousandths clear of Alesi.
Schumacher's clean afternoon
The race was a Schumacher procession from the lights. Alesi nearly nicked the lead off the line but his Ferrari was on the dirty side and the Benetton stayed ahead. Berger fended off Hill until lap 15 when the Williams finally got past at the carrousel. Coulthard, on his second Grand Prix start, fought a fierce internal battle with Hill, refusing for several laps to let his team-mate through after Hill outbraked him into the hairpin, and earning what the Englishman would later describe as "an equivocal gesture" in the cockpit. Coulthard eventually yielded on lap 9 ahead of the new GPDA chicane that the drivers had insisted be added between the Casino hairpin and the lakeside straight, on safety grounds.
By lap 25 Schumacher led Alesi by 12 seconds, with Hill close behind the Ferrari. The pit stops on laps 30-34 reordered the chase: Hill's clean stop on lap 33 (10 seconds) leapfrogged him ahead of Alesi, whose Ferrari took 11.4 seconds. Schumacher pitted on lap 41 with the race already won and emerged with thirty seconds in hand. Häkkinen retired on lap 62 with his fifth McLaren-Peugeot engine failure of the season, Ron Dennis's mood, deteriorating since Imola, hit a new low.
Coulthard's first points
Schumacher took his seventh career victory by 39 seconds, with Hill comfortable in second and Alesi a defiant third for Ferrari. Berger finished fourth, with David Coulthard fifth on his second F1 race to score his first World Championship points. JJ Lehto picked up the final point in sixth after Christian Fittipaldi's Arrows was disqualified post-race for being two kilograms under the minimum weight.
Schumacher led the championship 56 to 23 over Hill. The constructors' read Benetton 57, Ferrari 32, Williams 25, Jordan 11, McLaren-Peugeot 10. "I had to push the whole way to preserve my brakes and tyres for when I'd need to push hard again," Schumacher said. Alesi: "Michael was untouchable. My car was capable of holding second comfortably until the gearbox started giving me trouble." Hill, ever measured: "We are getting closer to Benetton. Coulthard? He needs to remember which car is the team's main entry, but he's promising." Mansell, somewhere in California, was already booking flights to England. The 1994 season was about to take another sharp turn.
Classification 1994 Canadian F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:28.927 min by Michael Schumacher (Benetton B194) in lap 31
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