1994 Brazilian F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Brazilian Grand Prix
Track: Autodromo Interlagos
Weather: overcast, humid, dry race
Michael Schumacher won his third F1 World Championship race at the 1994 Brazilian F1 GP today. The Benetton driver started from second and won on the Interlagos circuit for the first time. It was also his first win of the season and the eighth win for the Benetton F1 team.
A new world, with old anxieties
1994 began with Formula 1 having lost almost every aid it had spent five years adopting. Active suspension: gone. Traction control: gone. ABS: gone. Williams's revolutionary CVT gearbox: banned before it could race. Refuelling stops: brought back. Bernie Ecclestone wanted the show back, and Max Mosley had given it to him. The drivers were uneasy. Senna, who had finally got the Williams-Renault he had chased for two years, walked into the Interlagos paddock as world champion-in-waiting on the most discussed car in F1 and discovered, on Friday afternoon, that the new FW16 oscillated on its passive springs in a way that no amount of geometry could quite settle. He confided his worries to Alain Prost, with whom he was now in regular telephone contact after the post-Adelaide reconciliation. "I am uneasy," he told the former rival. "The car has a very narrow window."
Down the paddock the political stories that should have dominated the winter were still rumbling. Cyril de Rouvre, under investigation, would have to sell Ligier; three rival buyer groups (Briatore, the Streiff-Chaunac-Giraudi consortium, and Larrousse) were bidding through French government channels. Prost had spent four days in March testing the new McLaren-Peugeot at Estoril at Ron Dennis's insistence, sleeping on a comeback he ultimately declined; he announced his definitive retirement on 15 March and signed a consultancy contract with Renault to drive the futuristic Espace F1 prototype at promotional events. Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Olivier Panis were among five F1 debutants. Eddie Irvine arrived on a suspended six-month ban from the Suzuka punch.
Senna's 63rd pole, Schumacher 0.3s back
Senna took his 63rd career pole at 1m15.962s on Saturday, a time fractionally slower than Prost's 1993 pole. Schumacher was three-tenths back in the Benetton B194 that had impressed throughout winter testing. Alesi qualified the Ferrari third, a second and a half off, but the more shocking time came from the brand-new Sauber-Mercedes of Heinz-Harald Frentzen, fifth on his Grand Prix debut. Hill was a dismal fourth on the car his team-mate could not get to behave, 1.5 seconds adrift of Senna. McLaren-Peugeot's first weekend was hampered by V10 throttle problems; Häkkinen qualified eighth, Brundle eighteenth.
Schumacher's pit-lane overtake
Senna led off the line cleanly with Schumacher second, Alesi third. Schumacher passed Alesi at Junção on lap 2 and immediately set after the Williams. By lap 7 his Ford V8 had clocked the day's fastest lap, 1m18.455s. By lap 11 he was two seconds behind. Senna could not pull away from him; the Williams's narrow set-up window was visibly costing him in the slow sections, while the Benetton's launch traction control (banned in name but still operating, as Williams would discover) was punching the B194 cleanly out of every slow corner.
The first pit stops on lap 21-22 decided the race. Schumacher's mechanics serviced the Benetton in eight seconds. Senna's took ten. The German emerged ahead of the Brazilian on the pit straight and Senna never saw him again. By lap 24 the gap was 2.5 seconds. By lap 32 it was over five. The race within the race was Senna trying to catch his own team-mate's mistake, Hill, taking a single planned stop, ran third on lap 23 but was lapped twice before the end. Frentzen spun out of fifth on lap 16. JJ Lehto, supposed to debut, was at home with the back injury from January's Silverstone testing crash; Verstappen substituted.
Verstappen's cartwheel, Brundle's broken helmet
On lap 36 the second-biggest accident of the year took place. Behind Hangar Straight, in lapped traffic, Verstappen tried to pass Irvine on the outside as Irvine veered left to avoid Brundle's slowing McLaren. The Benetton ran wide, snapped, and cartwheeled into the back of Brundle's car, one of its wheels passing within inches of Brundle's helmet, splitting the carbon visor. Verstappen, Irvine, Brundle and Bernard were all out; Verstappen, somehow, was unhurt. Irvine, in the post-race investigation, would be banned for one race and fined $10,000 for triggering the accident by closing the door on a man he could not see (he had lost his left-side mirror earlier). He and Jordan immediately appealed.
Senna's spin, Senna's silence
By lap 50, Senna was running second, eight seconds behind Schumacher, with Hill the only other car on the lead lap. By lap 55 he was five seconds back and pushing. On lap 56, exiting Junção, the FW16 lifted under acceleration, the same oscillation Senna had been complaining about all weekend, and snapped sideways. The engine stalled. Senna, livid, called to the marshals for help; the rules forbade them. He climbed out and walked back to the pits to a stunned crowd. Schumacher cruised the remaining 15 laps to take his third career victory and the first of his championship campaign. Hill, on shredded tyres, took a lonely second a lap down. Alesi crossed the line third, with Barrichello an excellent fourth for Jordan, Katayama scoring his first F1 points with Tyrrell-Yamaha in fifth, and Wendlinger sixth for Sauber.
Schumacher leapt into Briatore's arms. "I couldn't imagine a better thing than winning this race! Luck has nothing to do with it. The engine and the chassis are excellent!" Eddie Jordan immediately protested Benetton's underfloor, the side dive plates allegedly did not match the regulations, but Charlie Whiting's scrutineers found no issue and confiscated Jordan's protest bond.
Senna, in front of the press, was disarmingly honest. "We simply did not get the car set up correctly for this circuit. Schumacher being slightly faster than me, there was nothing to do. When I made my mistake I was really on the razor's edge." Was the loss of active suspension hurting Williams? "Mechanical suspension is not as simple as one thinks. You have to understand it, advance in small steps. It is not easy, neither for the driver nor for the engineers." He boarded a flight home to São Paulo that evening to launch "Senninha", the cartoon character he had created for Brazilian children, and to think. Two weeks away. Imola was next. The death of Roland Ratzenberger, the death of Ayrton Senna, the worst weekend in Formula 1 history, none of it yet visible, all of it 35 days away.
Event: Brazilian Grand Prix
Track: Autodromo Interlagos
Classification 1994 Brazilian F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:18.455 min by Michael Schumacher (Benetton B194) in lap 7
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