30 April 1998 In yesterday tests at Barcelona Fisichella suffered a bad accident in which he smashed his car and suffered bad bruises to his right leg. The Italian driver said he thinks the accident was caused by the collapse of a suspension.
29 April 1998 FIA has forbidden the use of the tower wings (or winglets, or X-wings). This decision was met with different response by the drivers. Fisichella is happy about it, while Panis is worried because Prost will have to change the car setting completely. Alesi said that FIA should have acted a lot sooner on the issue, as the tower wings are obviously dangerous.
28 April 1998 Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo personally rang the top management of Goodyear to obtain reassurance that the tyres will be further improved. This move comes after M. Schumacher said that most of the work of improvement left to do on the Ferrari cars is on the tyres.
26 April 1998 The starting grid saw the two McLarens in the first row (Coulthard first, Hakkinen second) and the two Ferrari in the second (M. Schumacher third, Irvine fourth). The McLarens started well and Coulthard took the lead followed by team mate Hakkinen in second position and M. Schumacher in third. Villeneuve made a good start from the third row and got fourth position in front of Irvine (fifth) and Frentzen (sixth). Barrichello lost his rear wing after being hit by team mate Magnussen and span out of the race on the first lap, while Wurz had gear problems, became stuck in first gear and was hit from behind by Hill. Wurz pitted to have his car checked and the steering wheel (with the gear controls) substituted and rejoined the race. The two McLarens started getting away with M. Schumacher fighting to keep up with them but slowly losing ground. Frentzen and Fisichella became engaged in battle for sixth position while Herbert was forced out of the race by a collapsed rear suspension on lap 13. Soon afterwards Hakkinen started slowing down and was overtaken by M. Schumacher on lap 17. The Finn suffered from the first McLaren breakdown this season and retired with a broken gearbox. On the same lap Fisichella went out and lost a wheel. On lap 20 Wurz retired with smoke pouring out of his car: the engine had been damaged by being stuck in first gear at the beginning of the race. At the same time M. Schumacher started regaining some ground on Coultahrd, while his team mate Irvine attacked Villeneuve for third position. The drivers on two stop strategy started to pit and Coulthard and M. Schumacher pitted at almost the same time on lap 26. Coulthard maintained the lead. In the following lap Villeneuve and Irvine pitted, with the Irishman rejoining in third position. On lap 30 Nakano's Minardi suffered an engine failure and stopped by the side. The engine caught fire but the safety team immediately took care of it. Salo had pitted before but for some reason his pit crew had not managed to refuel his car and he had to stop again. Trulli suffered accelerator problems on lap 36 and retired after taking a trip in the dirt. Irvine went straight at Tamburello and lost about one second to Villeneuve, but his car suffered no damage. Alesi and Frentzen were battling for fifth position when the Frenchman pitted on lap 40. Frentzen pitted on lap 41 and rejoined in front of Alesi. Irvine was being held up by R. Schumacher, allowing Villeneuve to catch up with him. Eventually they both overtook the Jordan, but the gap between them was drastically reduced. On lap 44 Coulthard went for his second pit stop. Irvine and Villeneuve pitted at the same time, but the Williams mechanics had problems and Irvine rejoined in third position and with a good gap on Villeneuve. On lap 46 M. Schumacher had a very fast second pit stop (6.8 seconds) and then started pushing his car to catch up with Coulthard who was about 20 seconds ahead of him. Coulthard started suffering from brake problems and M. Schumacher started gaining one second a lap on the Scot, despite being held up for a while by Panis who retired on lap 57 with engine problems. On lap 61, one lap before the last, M. Schumacher and Coulthard were in visual contact but, despite the German's best effort, Coulthard took his wobbly McLaren past the finishing line to win his first GP this season, with the Ferrari of the ex World Champion five seconds behind and Irvine in third position. Villeneuve and Frentzen gave Williams fourth and fifth place respectively, with Alesi finishing sixth. The San Marino GP did not give M. Schumacher the victory he sought, but reopened the competition for a season that had appeared would be dominated by McLaren. For the first time McLaren showed some weakness, with Hakkinen retiring with gearbox problems and Coulthard suffering from brake failure that would have cost him the victory, had the race been a couple of laps longer. On the other hand, Ferrari seems to have now solved most of the reliability problems which plagued it for the past few years and might still become a serious contender for the Championship. Williams is still considerably behind and so is Benetton.
24 April 1998 Alexander Wurz has confirmed that his manager has "talked" to Ferrari, but also said that he's happy at Benetton and that he has a contract with them. However, he also added that contracts can be bought and that Ferrari has done just that before with Alesi and Irvine.
24 April 1998 Following Alesi's accident in Argentina, in which the Frenchman lost a tower wing by hitting cables on the way out of the pits, FIA is planning to forbit the use of tower wings. Ferrari is planning to start use tower wings in the San Marino GP.
23 April 1998 According to Bernie Ecclestone, McLaren's braking system is regular, but the final decision on the matter must be made by the race marshalls.
23 April 1998 Tazio Nuvolari has been included in the motorsport Hall of Fame.
23 April 1998 Villeneuve complained that he never thought his Williams would be so little competitive after three GPs. He said that they found out some problems with the car and that these will be fixed for the San Marino GP. He then added that the new wider tyres which helped Ferrari in Argentina made things more difficult for Williams. Wider front tyres help conteract understeering, which is a problem of Ferrari, while they make oversteering (a Williams problem) worse. Villeneuve said he is quiet annoyed with Goodyear because they had said that the new wider tyres would only be introduced for the San Marino GP, so that Williams had stopped testing them. However, when Ferrari said that they liked the wide tyres Goodyear decided to have them from the Argentina GP, so that Williams had to use them. He concluded by saying that if M. Schumacher leaves Ferrari in 1999 there will be a drive available and he could think about it.
23 April 1998 M. Schumacher has dropped hints that his contract with Ferrari might be extended beyond 1999. Apparently there have already been tentative talks on the subjects. The German driver also promised he will learn to speak Italian within two years. Yesterday he met Agnelli and other importatnt people at Ferrari and Fiat and came out of the meeting happy. He said that Ferrari F1 has full support from everybody.
22 April 1998 Giancarlo Fisichella was involved in a car accident in the Italian town of Pesaro. A Duna hit the Porsche he was travelling in and sent it to crash against a tree. The car was destroyed but Fisichella was Ok.
22 April 1998 At the Salone dell'Automobile in Turin, M. Schumacher said that Ferrari can win at Imola. He's very happy with the way the tests have gone at Fiorano and Mugello and he thinks that the only question mark on Sunday will be the tyres. If the tyres are as good as the ones Ferrari had in Argentina, there are very good chances that he and Eddie Irvine will run a very good race at the San Marino GP. He also said that in his opinion the Ferrari are the only cars that can currently compete with the McLarens.
21 April 1998 The Austrian paper Kurier printed an article saying that Ferrari has contacted Wurz, perhaps in view of M. Schumacher leaving to drive a McLaren Mercedes if he doesn't win the title with Ferrari this season. The article, written by Helmut Zwickl, also says that the other Ferrari driver would be J. Villeneuve.
20 April 1998 The press office of the San Marino race track has announced the weather forecast for Sunday: it will be cloudy but rain is not expected.
17 April 1998 The European Commission in Brusselles has voted the international tobacco advertising ban illegal. The international tobacco advertising ban had sparked threats from FIA to move most of the European GPs to Asia.
16 April 1998 The FIA meeting held yesterday at the Hilton hotel at Heathrow (London) saw the representatives of the F1 teams agree on the necessity for more clarity in the FIA rules to prevent diverging interpretaions. The meeting was concluded with the promise from FIA that the rules will be completely rewitten to avoid any ambiguity for next season and an official "agreement" for the current season. Montezemolo said he was happy with the meeting and that the lack of clear rules can cause serious damage to the image and credibility of F1. Ron Dennis agreed with Montezemolo. He said that nobody was under trial (the whole thing was started by Ferrari complaining about McLaren's third pedal) and that it was important to have clear rules.
15 April 1998 Ecclestone refused to appear in front of the British commission for the control of financing of political parties to explain why he gave a gift of one million pounds to the Labour party. After the commission intervention the Labour party returned the money, but a spokeperson of the commission said that they would like to know what Ecclestone was expecting from the British government in return for all that money.
14 April 1998 M. Schumacher and Coulthard have discussed their collision in the early stages of the Agentina GP and though none of them admitted liability, they have "agreed to disagree" and are not feuding.
12 April 1998 M. Schumacher proved the truth of his claim that his car had been improved a lot when he handed a Easter Day victory to Ferrari in the first race of the season not dominated by McLaren. Coulthard had the pole position, M. Schumacher started in second position and Hakkinen in third. The two McLarens started well and took the first two places. M. Schumacher almost immediately managed to overtake Hakkinen and started chasing Coulthard, while Irvine overtook Frentzen in a daring manouvre. The two Williams drivers proved they had no team orders by battling for position, with Villeneuve managing on lap five to overtake Frentzen, who was then also passed by Alesi. M. Schumacher tried to overtake Coulthard, who went wide and then closed the trajectory leading to a collision with the Ferrari. Both cars staid on the track with M. Schumacher in first position and Coulthard, whose car had lost a piece of bodywork, in sixth. In the meantime, Irvine showed that the Ferrari have really improved by managing to catch up with Hakkinen. On lap 15 Diniz went out and on lap 18 R. Schumacher collided with Magnussen, who had to retire, while the German pitted at lap 20 to have his car checked, then carried on only to spin and retire on lap 24. Around lap 28 the cars on two stops strategy started to pit. Alesi hit cables coming out of the pits and lost a side wing, but staid in the race and finished in the points. On lap 29 M. Schumacher went for his fist pit stop and Hakkinen took the lead. Irvine pitted immediately after M. Schumacher. Coulthard found himself battling for fourth position with Villeneuve but did not manage to overtake, so he decided to pit on lap 32. Local hero Tuero hit trouble while in the pits and lost one minute but rejoined the race. Race leader Hakkinen pitted at lap 43 and rejoined behind M. Schumacher, while Frentzen was taken out of the competition for points by being given a 10 seconds stop penalty for speeding in the pits. Hill had a collision with Herbert and had to retire with front damage while in 10th position. Herbert too was forced out of the race with a damaged tyre and was subsequently very bitter about Hill's manouvre. On lap 54 M. Schumacher was 19 seconds ahead of Hakkinen but was stuck in traffic, so Ferrari called him in for his second pit stop. The German rejoined in front of Hakkinen, who was being blocked by Tagaki, and kept the lead to the end of the race. On lap 55 Irvine pitted and rejoined in front of Wurz, who then managed to overtake the Ferrari for third position. With a few laps to go it started to rain and several cars span and took detours on the grass, including Coulthard and race leader M. Schumacher, who recovered despite losing 11 seconds to Hakkinen in second position. As Wurz tried to lap Tuero, the Argentinian locked his brakes and forced the Austrian to brake hard, sending him in a spin and allowing Irvine to regain the lowest podiumm position. Villeneuve retired after a collision with Coulthard. In the last two laps of the race the rain started to fall heavily, so that all drivers concentrated on not going out rather than on fighting for position. The race was won by M. Schumacher, followed by Hakkinen in second position, Irvine in third, Wurz in fourth, Alesi in fifth and Coulthard in sixth.
9 April 1998 Ford has produced a new light version of the Ford V10 engine used by Stewart for the Argentina GP. The engine is less powerful than the one used by Minardi and Tyrrell, but it is more reliable and better suited for the characteristics of the Baires track.
9 April 1998 M. Schumacher reiterated his faith in the Ferrari F300. According to the German ex-World Champion, the F300 is the best car Ferrari has produced in years and he expects it to be at the same level as the McLarens at the San Marino GP. After that, he added, Ferrari will start winning.
8 April 1998 Bernie Ecclestone went to see a Cart race at Long Beach with the mayor of San Francisco and Chris Pook, who is trying to get F1 back to the US. The US GP would take place at Presido, an ex-military base to the north of the city.
8 April 1998 Norberto Fontana is in talks with Stewart over a position as test driver.
8 April 1998 Ron Dennis announced that his cars will go to Argentina with the much talked about third pedal. Ferrari and Williams will use new wider front tyres which have proved better in testing than the old narrow ones.
5 April 1998 M. Schumacher said he is very happy with the way his Ferrari is behaving in testing. He thinks that in next race Ferrari will be a bit closer to McLaren and that a podium result is very possible in the Argentinian GP. Ferrari (and other teams on Goodyear) have been experimenting with wider tyres, which are successfully used by teams on Bridgestone, and it is expected that Ferrari will have wider front tyres for next GP.
1 April 1998 Villeneuve said that he's not at all happy with his Williams FW20 and that the engine makes a sound like some of the guitar pieces he's learning. On the other hand, M. Schumacher is very happy with his Ferrari F300 which is, in his words, a lot better and easier to driver than last year's car. He added that he's not worried about the points gap with McLaren because there are still lots of races to go. According to M. Schumacher Ferrari will soon be up to McLaren's standard and one of the things they have to wait for is for Goodyear to produce tyres as good as Bridgestone, which they are not far from achieving. The German ex-world champion was very impressed with the new 047D engine he had in Brazil (Irvine raced with the old engine) and he thinks it is probably better than McLaren's engine.
Last updated on 30 April 1998 by Federica Massagrande