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Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

S3 E9: Jerez 1997 - Villeneuve vs Schumacher

Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.9734 Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2021

⏱️ 96 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The 1997 European Grand Prix produced one of F1's most exciting championship deciders, with the destiny of the title coming down to a controversial collision between Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher. Karun Chandhok and Jonathan Williams join Glenn Freeman to revisit a memorable weekend in F1 history, where drama and controversy were never far away. We look back at Villeneuve racing under appeal in the previous race in Japan, and Williams's decision to drop that appeal against his one-race ban. Then there was Villeneuve's plan to repeatedly mention his fear of being taken out by Schumacher ahead of the race, and his fallout with Eddie Irvine in the pits during practice. We look back at the three-way dead heat in qualifying, and ask if Damon Hill's Arrows should have taken pole that day. The race is revisited in great detail, from Villeneuve's bad start, Heinz-Harald Frentzen's team play for Williams, Norberto Fontana's eventual confession about holding Villeneuve up, and where an agreement between Williams and McLaren fit into how the race played out. We then take an in-depth look at the collision and Schumacher's failed attempt to take Villeneuve out, and Jonathan tells a hilarious story of how Frentzen reacted on the radio when he saw the accident take place ahead of him. From there, we get Patrick Head's side of the story on the agreement between McLaren and Williams, as well as finding out why Jonathan was collared by Ron Dennis early in the race, the arguments that were taking place on the radio between McLaren and David Coulthard over letting Mika Hakkinen through to take his first win, the backlash Schumacher faced from inside Ferrari and Italy, and if the FIA made the right decisions with its punishment of the Ferrari driver and deciding not to take action against Williams and McLaren. There's also a bonus story about Jordan and Nigel Mansell from the previous winter, the revelation of McLaren's mystery extra brake pedal, and Gerhard Berger's decision to retire from F1 after a fractious year that involved Flavio Briatore trying to prevent him returning after missing races in the middle of the year.ASK US ANYTHING: Submit your questions about anything to do with F1 from 1989-2005 by using #BringBackV10s on Twitter, or by leaving us a five-star review!

Transcript

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0:00.0

The 1997 European Grand Prix is one of F1's most famous title showdowns.

0:10.0

Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher went head to head in a flat-out battle for 47 laps,

0:16.0

before a controversial collision decided the destiny of that year's world championship.

0:21.9

I'm Glenn Freeman and in this episode of Bring Back V10s, we'll revisit what happened before,

0:27.8

during and after that incredible weekend at Horeth, including the trouble Vilna found himself

0:33.3

in before the finale and of course the huge fallout from Schumacher's failed attempt to take him out.

0:39.0

Before we introduce our guests, this is your last chance to get your questions in for our series finale

0:45.1

where we'll be taking your questions on anything to do with F1 from 1989 to 2005.

0:51.4

You can submit them using the hashtag Bring Back V10s on Twitter, or if you like what

0:55.9

you're hearing and want to leave us a five-star review, feel free to include a question

1:00.1

there too.

1:01.5

I'm doing my best to get through as many shoutouts as possible to our reviewers.

1:06.2

With the amount we've got coming in at the moment, you're not making it easy.

1:09.1

But thanks so much to everyone

1:11.1

who has left us a review recently, including Matty 73920, Meredith 27, Scott Woodwis, Barbarism,

1:20.5

Lauren Jade Ash and Mark M 1988. There are so many more, so I'll just have to keep increasing

1:26.6

the number of people we give shoutouts to on each episode to try it to keep up.

1:31.3

But let's bring in our guests and get on with Haref 97.

1:35.1

I'm delighted to say we have Karin Chanduk back with us for this one,

1:38.4

and we've also got one of our most popular guests from the last series,

1:42.2

Jonathan Williams, a man who knows a thing or two about the inner workings of the phenomenal Williams team built by his dad, Frank.

1:50.2

Jonathan, welcome back. We last had you on to talk about Juan Pablo Montoya's 2001 season, and people really enjoyed hearing your stories from inside Williams.

...

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