Bring Back V10s: Spain 1994 - F1 in crisis, Schumacher's heroics and Hill's emotional win

The Race F1 Podcast

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bring Back V10s dives into the chaos of May and June 1994 as we look back on that year's Spanish Grand Prix, which came just a month after the tragedies of Imola.

With the world still reeling from the loss of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, F1 found itself under fire following further heavy accidents for Pedro Lamy in testing and Karl Wendlinger in Monaco.

Glenn Freeman, Edd Straw and Ben Anderson look at how F1's political landscape exploded during this period, with FIA president Max Mosley seeing an opportunity to force through change, which caused a backlash in some parts of the paddock.

We explore how that spread into the Barcelona weekend, with several teams boycotting first practice, and drivers forcing a terrible chicane made of tyres to be installed on the track.

The weekend also marked David Coulthard's F1 debut as talk of Nigel Mansell returning to Williams dominated the headlines, while Michael Schumacher put in one of his most famous drives to finish second while stuck in fifth gear.

Ahead of Schumacher, Damon Hill claimed a much-needed first win of the season for Williams, which prompted a huge outpouring of emotion within the team after what had been a horrible few weeks for everyone who worked there.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Athletic
0:02.7	F1 was in turmoil in May 1994, with the fallout from the tragic events of Imala,
0:16.8	only getting worse as two more drivers suffered horrendous accidents,
0:20.9	and F1 faced increasing criticism that seemed to put its very existence under threat.
0:26.8	It all came to ahead in the build-up to the Spanish Grand Prix,
0:29.5	where teams argued with the FIA over hastily introduced rule changes that were being made to the cars.
0:35.5	The drivers demanded action be taken to make the
0:38.0	tracks safer and the weekend started with a practice session where only nine cars ran because
0:44.3	of arguments that were taking place in the paddock when everybody should have been on track.
0:49.8	Despite it being another highly charged weekend at a time when F1 seemed to give people little to smile about,
0:56.4	the race ended with a much-needed feel-good story,
0:59.3	as Damon Hill gave Williams its first win of the season,
1:03.0	and most importantly, of course, its first win since the death of Ayrton Senna.
1:07.7	We have no plans to cover Imola-1994 on Bring Bringback V10. So this might be as close as we
1:14.4	ever get as we dig into the fallout that was still being felt from that weekend a month on
1:19.7	when F1 headed to Barcelona for that year's Spanish Grand Prix. I'm Glenn Freeman and joining me
1:26.1	to look back at a busy weekend of Barcelona
1:29.3	1994, our Ed Straw and Ben Anderson. Ben, let's start as we always do. When you think back to the
1:35.8	1994 Spanish Grand Prix, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Schumacher in fifth gear.
1:41.5	Excellent. Absolutely emblazoned in my memory. And particularly that graphic, which I'm not sure we saw before or since.
1:48.0	It's very convenient that the one time someone got stuck in gear, we had that graphic
1:53.0	that we hardly ever saw.
	...

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