The 1999 World Championship season had been turned on its head following Michael Schumacher’s broken leg at the British Grand Prix. The Silverstone race left Schumacher’s Ferrari team-mate Eddie Irvine eight points behind championship leader Mika Hakkinen, but victories in the next two races – in Austria and Germany – had propelled the Ulsterman into pole position. Hakkinen fought back with a win in Hungary and a second in Belgium but missed out at Monza where Irvine, too, could only finish sixth. Going into the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, with just two more races to follow, the two chief protagonists were level on points. Irvine was relishing his new-found, albeit temporary, status as Ferrari number one while Hakkinen, judging from the way he broke down in tears at Monza after spinning off while comfortably in the lead, was definitely starting to feel the pressure. With Schumacher’s legions of German fans rooting for Irvine, the Nürburgring appeared the ideal place to increase that pressure, yet in the heat of battle it was Ferrari that buckled.
The European Grand Prix was a race which had everything – tension, farce, joy, despair, drama, anger, and at one stage seemingly a new leader every lap. There was enough excitement for half a dozen Grands Prix.
As is so often the case in Formula One, the overriding factor was the weather. The morning rain had stopped before the end of the Saturday lunchtime qualifying session but the track remained wet and the best times were set in the closing minutes, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s Jordan snatching pole from David Coulthard and Hakkinen. Irvine could manage no better than ninth. He would be starting from a long way back. The track was dry for start time but the overcast sky suggested that it was unlikely to remain so for the full 66 laps. An aborted start, after Minardi driver Marc Gene had signalled a problem on the grid, was an indication of the drama that was to follow almost from the moment the lights went out. As the field flowed into the first corner, Damon Hill’s Jordan lost power and Alexander Wurz had to swerve to avoid it. In doing so, he clipped Pedro Diniz’s Sauber which flipped over on to the grass. The safety car was called out while Diniz was extricated, happily with nothing more serious than a few bruises. When the safety car departed, Frentzen led from Hakkinen, Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella. By lap 17 Irvine had worked his way up to fifth. At that point it started to rain.
Three laps later Hakkinen, in second, pitted for wet tyres. This proved a grave misjudgement, as the shower soon passed and he found himself losing up to ten seconds per lap. But his move seemed to spread panic. On lap 21 the Ferrari pit were getting ready to bring Irvine in for new tyres when Mika Salo (Schumacher’s replacement in the Ferrari team) came in unexpectedly, needing a new nose-cone and tyres. He was away again after a 30-second stop, but the unscheduled visit had caused his tyres to become mixed up with those of his team-mate. To complicate matters further, Irvine and Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, seeing the rain easing off, hastily switched their choice of tyres from wet to dry, forcing the mechanics to shelve one set of tyres and find another four. Irvine wanted to stay out for an extra lap to give the mechanics time to prepare, but he didn’t have sufficient fuel and so he had to come in just 23 seconds after Salo had left. As the Ferrari crew scrambled for Irvine’s fresh set of tyres, they could find only three. The right rear tyre was still in the garage. This Keystone Cop performance cost Irvine a pit stop of 28.2 seconds – 20 seconds over the norm – and dropped him out of the points-scoring positions. It was an unmitigated disaster.
Irvine’s only consolation was that Hakkinen had fallen back to tenth on the unsuitable wets, but on lap 24 the Finn tried again, this time calling in for dry tyres.
Eight laps later, the first and second-placed drivers, Frentzen and Coulthard, pitted together. Frentzen got away first but the Jordan ground to a halt with an electrical problem at the very next corner, handing Coulthard the lead. By lap 38 it had started to rain heavily again. Coulthard, on dry tyres, was slipping and sliding his way around the track but was hanging on to his ten-second lead over Ralf Schumacher until he pressed too hard and slithered into the gravel and out of the race.
This presented the younger Schumacher with a 20-second advantage over Fisichella, but Schumacher was on a two-stop strategy and when he pitted on lap 44, the Benetton driver became the new leader. But four laps later Fisichella, like Coulthard before him, failed to cope with the wet track and spun out of the race. Presented with the lead once more, Schumacher was prevented from taking advantage when, on the following lap, he suffered a right rear puncture and limped to the pits. With Schumacher down to fifth, Johnny Herbert, who had started a lowly fourteenth on the grid, suddenly found that it was his turn to lead.
Greatly assisted by a switch to wets on lap 35, Herbert kept his head while all around were losing theirs. Having previously finished just four races that season, the popular Englishman held on for his third Grand Prix win and, more importantly, the Stewart team’s maiden victory. And with team-mate Rubens Barrichello finishing third behind Jarno Trulli’s Prost, it was a highly emotional day for Jackie Stewart and his colleagues. There was joy, too, for Minardi. Luca Badoer seemed set to pick up the Italian team’s first points for four years, only for his car to die on lap 54 when he was lying fourth. All was not lost, however, as team-mate Gene came through to finish sixth and earn Minardi a priceless point. But it was another hard luck story for former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, still seeking BAR’s first point. He was poised for fifth place when his clutch failed.
Villeneuve’s loss proved Hakkinen’s gain. Having appeared to give up, Hakkinen found a new lease of life towards the end and, four laps from the finish, harassed Irvine into a costly mistake. Once past Irvine, Hakkinen profited from Villeneuve’s late exit to finish fifth and pick up two vital points. Irvine ended up seventh to round off a hugely disappointing day for Ferrari.
Irvine was understandably angry at the prolonged pit stop. ‘It is a problem when you have one team of mechanics serving two cars,’ he said. ‘We should have two teams doing it. We screwed it up.’ Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was even more scathing. ‘Ferrari’s fans are rightfully very upset and we cannot tolerate it. We made a complete mess of it and it must never happen again.’