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Formula One 1999 Review: Intense title race produced high drama

11 November 1999

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

Hakkinen prevails again in season with plenty of twists, turns and surprises

INDIANAPOLIS-- The record books for the 1999 Formula One season will show that Finlands Mika Hakkinen won his second consecutive World Drivers Championship driving a West McLaren-Mercedes. They will also show that Ferrari won its first Constructors Championship since 1983. Those results were only achieved after a grueling season with 16 races around the world

-- a season of drama, surprises and controversy; a season that turned into a four-way battle for the championship; and a season in which the titles were not decided until the final race.

Before the start of it all, many forecasted that the Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes teams would battle for the top honors, but few predicted that it would be Eddie Irvine to head the Ferrari charge rather than his renowned teammate, Michael Schumacher. After breaking his leg halfway through the season, however, Schumacher had to miss seven races.

Although Schumacher was out of contention, Hakkinen didnt cruise to the title. After 13 of 16 rounds, Hakkinen and Irvine were tied for the lead in the points race, while Hakkinens teammate, David Coulthard, and Heinz-Harald Frentzen were also still in contention for the title.

Next years inaugural United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis on Sept. 24 will be the 15th of 17 races and could very well be a crucial race in determining the outcome of the 2000 World Championship.

This years championship chase began in Australia, where Irvine scored his first-ever Grand Prix victory. The McLarens of Hakkinen and Coulthard were quick, indeed, but both cars retired with mechanical woes.

Michael Schumacher had his troubles after stalling and having to start at the back of the pack and then losing time with a shredded tire. The fact that neither he nor Hakkinen nor Coulthard scored points was an indication that none of the three championship favorites was in for an easy season.

The season opener also set several other trends. Frentzen finished second in his Benson & Hedges Jordan-Mugen-Honda and would go on to score points in 12 of 16 races. Along the way, Frentzen won twice and earned enough points to finish third in the Drivers Championship. He also helped Jordan place third in the Constructors Championship, the teams best result in its nine-year history.

Ralf Schumacher, Michael Schumachers younger brother, took third place in Australia behind the wheel of his Winfield Williams-Supertec. While the Supertec V10 didnt have the power to match the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Ford, Schumacher scored top-six points finishes in 11 races.

Alex Zanardi, Ralf Schumachers teammate, struggled all season. Returning to F1 after winning two CART championships, Zanardi found it difficult to adapt to the new-age F1 cars with their grooved dry-weather tires and knife-edged handling characteristics.

Zanardi failed to score a single point.

It wasnt all Zanardis fault, however, as bad luck seemed to strike his car far more often than his teammates, leading Team Williams technical director Patrick Head to say, "Weve let Alex down more often than he has let us down."

At the end of the season, team owner Frank Williams publicly stated that Zanardi will be back with the team next year.

Frentzens teammate, Damon Hill, also had a difficult season. Hill, the 1996 World Champion and son of Indianapolis 500 winner and two-time World Champion Graham Hill, finished in the points only once in the first seven races. And at that seventh race, in France, Hill announced that he was going to retire.

What Hill did not make clear, however, was when he was going to step out of the Jordan for the final time. This led to intense media and fan speculation at the next race, which happened to be his home race -- the British Grand Prix. It wasnt until days after that event that Hill announced that he would finish off the season. He did but didnt seem to enjoy many of those final races.

At the British Grand Prix, the World Championship fray took a dramatic turn as Michael Schumacher crashed his Ferrari when a bleed screw came loose on the rear brakes. Schumacher broke both bones in his lower right leg. Just how long he would be out of action became almost weekly, if not daily, news.

At the British Grand Prix, DaimlerChysler declared its intention to buy 40 percent of the McLaren F1 team. That was one of several moves by major automobile manufacturers, which continue to get further involved in F1.

Ford bought the Stewart-Ford team and will rename it Jaguar Racing next year. Honda will return to F1 full time in 2000, and Toyota will follow in two years.

All the teams ran on the same brand of tire in 1999. Goodyear pulled out of F1 at the end of the 1998 season, leaving Bridgestone as the sole tire supplier for the series. Next year, Bridgestone/Firestone will also be the sole tire supplier in the Indy Racing League and CART.

After the British Grand Prix, the midpoint of the season, Hakkinen led with 40 points, while Irvine and Michael Schumacher each had 32. Frentzens tally was 26 points, and Coulthards was 22.

Irvine was now team leader at Ferrari and responded with back-to-back wins in Austria and Germany, taking the points lead from Hakkinen. Those victories also put the spotlight on the different philosophies of McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari on how to win the World Championship.

McLaren director Ron Dennis has always insisted that his two drivers have equal equipment and equal opportunities, and the team will issue no team orders until one driver is basically mathematically eliminated from the points race.

Ferrari, meanwhile, puts most of its effort behind Schumacher, who gets priority treatment. In the French Grand Prix, for example, a wet and wild affair run in streaming rain, Irvine was running fifth and Schumacher was sixth, but they swapped places so that Schumacher could gain the extra points.

Even though Hakkinen had 40 points to Coulthards 22 prior to the Austrian Grand Prix (round nine of 16), Team McLaren didnt order Coulthard to give way at the start. As the two drivers both dived into a turn, Coulthard tipped Hakkinen into a spin and last place. What followed was a phenomenal drive by Hakkinen as he charged his way from last to third.

The next races saw the fortunes of Hakkinen and Irvine swing wildly. Hakkinen had a tire blow in Germany, won in Hungary, was beaten by his teammate Coulthard in Belgium and threw away a win in Italy after making a mistake while downshifting. The race in Belgium was another example of McLaren not ordering Coulthard, who was winning, to move over for Hakkinen, and it led to tension between the two drivers.

Irvine won in Germany. Ironically, this time he was be beneficiary of Ferraris policy as his teammate, Mika Salo, standing in for Schumacher, slowed down so that Irvine could take the victory.

Irvine then scored enough points in Hungary, Belgium and Italy so that, after 13 races, he and Hakkinen were tied with 60 each. With his win in Italy, Frentzen now had 50 points and Coulthard had 48.

The next race on the schedule was the European Grand Prix at Germanys Nurburgring, where rain turned the event into turmoil. Coulthard led but slid off. Frentzen led but stopped with electronics problems.

Hakkinen ran second but fell back after he and the McLaren team made the wrong tire choice when it began to rain. Irvine and Ferrari also had the wrong strategy when it came to choosing between rain tires and dry tires, and that led to the now-infamous chaotic pit stop in that race where Irvine sat stationary for an agonizing 28 seconds with only three tires on his car.

In the closing stages of the European Grand Prix, Hakkinen fought his way back to fifth place while Irvine finished seventh and out of the points. Hakkinen left the track with a two-point advantage over Irvine, which would also be his margin over Irvine at the end of the season...

While the championship contenders did their best to throw away points in the European Grand Prix, Johnny Herbert and the Stewart-Ford team made no mistakes and used the perfect tire strategy. Herbert went on to earn Stewart-Fords first Grand Prix victory.

Herberts teammate, Rubens Barrichello, finished third to complete the happy day for the team started by three-time World Champion and 1966 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year Jackie Stewart. The Stewart-Ford team finished fourth in the Constructors Championship in only its third F1 season.

One reason Hakkinen scored points in the European Grand Prix was because Jacques Villeneuves British American Racing-Supertec, which had been in fifth place, expired shortly before the finish.

This was the first season for the British American Racing (BAR) team, and it was a tough one. Despite substantial sponsorship from British American Tobacco and technical input from Reynard, which dominates the CART championship, BAR suffered a string of reliability problems.

While the car became more competitive as the season wore on, thanks in part to former Indianapolis 500 winner Villeneuve driving harder than ever, the BAR team failed to score a single point all season and finished in 11th and last place in the Constructors Championship.

"We just are going to start looking at next year," Villeneuve said, "but when youre so far down you can only go up."

Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher was in the news again. He had tested several times and finally decided that he would sit out the rest of the season, as his leg was still painful when he drove. Five days after making that announcement, however, he changed his mind and said he would race in the last two events.

It all set up an exciting championship showdown in the final two races.

Four drivers still had a chance to win the crown when Formula One headed to the new state-of-the-art circuit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Michael Schumacher drove a masterful race: He led twice and twice handed the lead to his teammate, Irvine, and also held Hakkinen at bay so that Hakkinen could only finish third.

Irvines victory in Malaysia gave him a four-point lead over Hakkinen heading into the season finale in Japan. Hours after the race in Malaysia, however, race officials disqualified both Ferraris because their side air deflectors were one centimeter (.39 of an inch) beyond the limits allowed by regulations.

Ferrari later successfully appealed against the disqualification by calling into question the methods of the measuring process. That drew sharp protests from McLaren and Mercedes, but the bottom line was that Irvine had his win in Malaysia reinstated and had a four-point advantage in the final race. Coulthard and Frentzen had finally been eliminated from the points battle, so the title would be decided between Irvine and Hakkinen in Japan. To guarantee his second championship, Hakkinen had to win in Japan, and he did just that with what McLarens Ron Dennis would call one of Hakkinens best races ever.

Irvines only hope was that Michael Schumacher win the race, but Schumacher lost out to Hakkinen at the start and never got close to him all afternoon. Schumacher and Coulthard would later exchange harsh words over what Schumacher thought was unfair blocking tactics by Coulthard, but both drivers have since softened their stance.

So the season ended with Hakkinen crowned champion again. By finishing second and third in Japan, respectively, Schumacher and Irvine earned enough points to ensure that Ferrari took the Constructors Championship.

"Irvine had a marvelous season," said Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, "and if weve won the constructors title, we owe it above all to Irvine, who gave everything he had. But calmly, objectively, realistically, we have to accept that Hakkinen is faster, and that 10 times out of 10 in a head-to-head, Hakkinen was first.

"Its true that Ferrari havent won the drivers title for the last 20 years," di Montezemolo said, "but weve made our opponents pay a high price and weve made a show of strength. There are two reasons (why Ferrari didnt win the drivers crown). Firstly, Hakkinen deserved it. He was good. Compliments to him. He showed coolness, ability and concentration, especially in the last race. Compliments, too, to McLaren, it wasnt a bicycle theyd given him."

Irvine took his defeat graciously.

"There is no point in crying," he said. "We put up a good fight. When you consider what happened to us this year, to be going into the last race with a chance in both championships means we cant really complain too much."

No driver except the legendary Juan Manual Fangio has ever won three consecutive World Championships. Can Hakkinen join that elite club next year?

"You never know what's going to happen next year," Hakkinen said, "and that s obviously a question that I cant answer with much confidence! I am going to enjoy the result we have been able to achieve here this year, so lets talk about that subject next year."

The Formula One engines are silent now as the FIA bans all testing for 30 days after the final race of the season. But the teams are already hard at work on their new cars and preparing for the 2000 Formula One season, which will include the first United States Grand Prix since 1991.

Editors Note: To view hundreds of hot racing photos and art, visit The Racing Photo Museum and the Visions of Speed Art Gallery.