Jerez 1997

Merry Christmas everyone,

I have been going through the archives. Back in 1997 I did not speak English and did not get that much out of what happens in F1.

Can you please explain me in more detail, what exactly hapenned to schumacher in Jerez 1997? He controlled the whole race, and suddenly a 5 second lead evaporated in 2 laps and Villeneuve went through. What was the reason for this lack of pace?

I thought it is the tyres, but I just read an article which quotes Irvine saying:

"Schumacher’s teammate Eddie Irvine commented that “Michael really screwed up because he got overconfident. He did his final pit stop, he thought “I’Shumacherm there”. So he backed off, partly also because he was scared of blistering his tyres, but he let Jacques get too close. If there is one driver you don’t want to allow to get too close it’s Jacques…That move also for me deserved the world championship. There is not another driver on the grid who would have come from that far back to make that move. Because one thing Jacques did have was big balls.”

thank you

I pretty much disregard everything Irvine has said since he left F1.

As I remember the common rumours at the time was that Schumacher was suffering from a water leak and wouldn't have finished the race, so he sucked Villeneuve in and then did what he thought he could get away with out of desperation.

Yeah Iive always thought it was more what gav said. I don't think theres any way Schumacher would have let Villeneuve cruise up to the back of him unless he had a problem..

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Ross Brawn covers the incident in his (excellent) recent book with Adam Parr. He doesn't mention any mechanical incidents more that Michael just got it wrong - in fact he mentions that Michael stormed back to the pits blaming JV before Brawn had to calm him down and get him to watch the tape.

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X (@ed24f1)