Brazilian GP - Säo Paulo 11 April 1999

Race Report

It was a bad start of the Brazilian GP for David Coulthard, who stalled his car on the starting grid. All other drivers managed to avoid him, with Hakkinen taking the lead followed by Brazilian driver Barrichello and M. Schumacher. Fisichella took fourth position, only to lose it almost immediately to Irvine. On lap three the McLaren mechanics finally managed to start Coulthard's car and the Scot joined the race from the pits. As Coulthard exited the pitlane, Hakkinen suffered from a slight gear problem, which allowed Barrichello to take the lead in front of his very excited home crowd. M. Schumacher took advantage of Hakkinen's problem too and took second position. Hakkinen soon proved that his gear problem was transitory by keeping very close to M. Schumacher and occasionally having a look for a chance to overtake. On lap 10 Hill and Wurz had a shunt, which resulted in the English driver getting back slowly to the pits and retiring. Panis was given a 10 seconds stop-go penalty for jumping the start. With Barrichello leading, Herbert on the second Stewart was doing his part too, nicely overtaking Alesi for seventh place. The Sauber cars were suffering from problems with the high gears and the drivers been told to stay in the low gears, which made Herbert's task slightly easier. Unluckily for him, shortly after taking seventh place, on lap 14, Herbert's car developed hydraulic problems and the Stewart driver slowly made his way back to the pits and retired. Wurz, who had already cut a corner after his shunt with Hill, took another trip on the dirt and rejoined only to have to go back to the pits with chassis trouble. Trulli too went back to the pits and retired. At this stage in the race Barrichello was first, M. Schumacher second, being attacked by Hakkinen in third position, Irvine was in fourth position, Alesi in fifth and Fisichella in sixth. It became obvious that Coulthard's car still had problems when the McLaren driver drove back unexpected into the pits, stopped for a second or so in front of the McLaren pits with no mechanics out, then restarted and rejoined the race only to stop by the side of the track very shortly afterwards. On lap 28 race leader Barrichello went for his first pit stop (8.8 seconds), giving the lead to M. Schumacher, closely followed by Hakkinen. Barrichello rejoined in fourth position behind Irvine and in front of Fisichella and Frentzen. Alesi, who had been doing good lap times, stopped by the side of the track and retired. The French driver got out of the car and sat down to look unhappily at the other cars drive past. Serrazin's Minardi went into a dramatic spin, with the car turning a number of times at high speed, possibly because Sarrazin still had his foot on the accelerator or because the accelerator had become stuck. Luckily the car stopped spinning, went out to the side of the track and stopped on the grass. Sarrazin was unhurt, but the violence of the accident was all too evident from the fact that one of the front wheels had become detached and had torn off the tether which from this year is compulsory to prevent wheels from causing damage in case of accident. Barrichello saw his chance to attack Irvine and the Ferrari driver failed to closed the door on him, allowing the Brazilian to take third position. Again the crowd showed its excitement in seeing a Brazilian driver do so well on home ground, something which had not happened since the times of Senna. On lap 40 M. Schumacher went for his first pit stop (10.3 seconds) and rejoined in second position. Hakkinen started trying to put in very fast laps to build up a good gap between himself and the Ferrari driver before his own pit stop, but found some traffic. Fisichella too went for his pit stop, could not get his car into gear and had to retire. With Fisichella out of the race Frentzen moved into fifth position and R. Schumacher into sixth. On lap 41 Irvine pitted and rejoined in fifth position, just in front of race leader Hakkinen. Knowing all too well that Irvine would do all he could to slow down the Finn to give his team mate an advantage, the McLaren team took the executive decision to call him in for his pit stop (9.1). Hakkinen managed to rejoin in the lead in front of M. Schumacher. On lap 44 the Brazilian crowd suffered a big disappointment as smoke started coming out of the engine of local hero Barrichello, who was in third position, forcing the Stewart driver to retire. On the same lap Diniz span out of the race. Shortly afterwards Zanardi went back to the pits and retired. Interviewed as he was coming out of the car, he said he had never driven a car with so many problems and was surprised that R. Schumacher's car was working at all. More retirements were still to come, Villeneuve drove back to the pits and retired, while De La Rosa could not make it back to the pits and parked his car to the side of the track. On lap 55 Irvine, then in third position, was called to the pits for an unscheduled stop. No fuel was put in and the tyres were not changed, but air was blown into the car. The track was very dirty and it is possible that Irvine's car was overheating because of the dirt he had picked up, but the net result was that he slipped down two positions the finishing stages of the race. The Ferrari driver managed to catch up with R. Schumacher and tried to attack him for fourth position, but it was too late and Hakkinen passed the finishing line, freezing the finishing positions. Frentzen ran out of fuel and stopped before crossing the line but, because Hakkinen had completed the race, he kept third position. M. Schumacher was second, R. Schumacher fourth, Irvine fifth and Panis sixth. In Brazil the reliability problem of the McLaren was visible again, with Coulthard suffering from hydraulic problems from the very start, which put him out of the race, and Hakkinen suffering from a gear problem which, fortunately for him, sorted itself out soon enough. Hakkinen's McLaren was definitely the fastest car on the track, though M. Schumacher's Ferrari kept closer to it than it was expected. Ferrari have put more effort in ensuring reliability than speed and the result is self evident. Ferrari was the only team which had both cars finishing, and finishing in the points, though it is not clear why Irvine was called to the pits so late in the race, losing two positions. Stewart seem to be suffering from a reliability problem too, which is a shame because they would certainly be doing very well this season otherwise. If they manage to solve the reliability problem we should see a lot of them in the next races. Barrichello is proving himself as the heir of Senna, as the crowd reaction proved today in Säo Paulo, though he is still far from achieving the same idol status. Despite Zanardi's problems (the differential broke almost immediately, then the first gear went and caused serious damage) and comments, R. Schumacher finished the first two GPs in the points. Frentzen finished again on the podium, giving some consolation to the Jordan team, which is currently having to put up with Hill's bad luck. Next appointment is at Imola, on the 2nd of May.

Finishing Times - Brazil

Position	Driver	Car	Time
1st	Hakkinen, M.	McLaren	72 laps in 1h36'03"785 at 192,994 km/h
2nd	Schumacher, M.	Ferrari	+4"9
3rd	Frentzen, H.-H.	Jordan	1 lap
4th	Schumacher, R.	Williams	1 lap
5th	Irvine, E.	Ferrari	1 lap
6th	Panis, O.	Prost	1 lap
7th	Wurz, A.	Benetton	2 laps
8th	Takagi, T.	Arrows	3 laps
9th	Gené, M.	Minardi	3 laps

Starting Grid

Row	Driver	Car	Qualifying Time	Driver	Car	Qualifying Time
1st	Hakkinen, M.	McLaren	1'16"5 average: 201,797 km/h	Coulthard, D.	McLaren	1'16"715
2nd	Barrichello, R.	Stewart	1'17"305	Schumacher, M.	Ferrari	1'17"578
3rd	Fisichella, G.	Benetton	1'17"810	Irvine, E.	Ferrari	1'17"843
4th	Hill, D.	Jordan	1'17"884	Frentzen, H.-H.	Jordan	1'17"902
5th	Wurz, A.	Benetton	1'18"334	Herbert, J.	Stewart	1'18"374
6th	Schumacher, R.	Williams	1'18"506	Panis, O.	Prost	1'18"636
7th	Trulli, J.	Prost	1'18"684	Alesi, J.	Sauber	1'18"716
8th	Diniz, P.	Sauber	1'19"194	Zanardi, A.	Williams	1'19"452
9th	Sarrazin, S.	Minardi	1'20"016	De La Rosa, P.	Arrows	1'20"075
10th	Takagi, T.	Arrows	1'20"096	Gené, M.	Minardi	1'20"710
11th	Villeneuve, J.	BAR	penalty	-	-	-