1996 Belgian Grand Prix

Qualifying

Race

The start of the race saw the two Saubers of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Johnny Herbert eliminated immediately when they collided at the La Source hairpin after attempting to evade an incident where Olivier Panis spun his Ligier after making contact with Rubens Barrichello's Jordan. Panis also retired on the spot; Barrichello was able to continue, pitting to repair his suspension, although it eventually failed altogether on lap 30.

On lap 10, Jos Verstappen pitted with a sticking throttle. The Footwork Arrows pit crew found no damage and sent Verstappen back out, only for the Dutchman to crash almost immediately. Team boss Tom Walkinshaw confirmed after the race that the throttle problem had not recurred, and that the crash was caused by a faulty wheel bearing. The incident brought out the safety car for seven laps, during which time all the drivers besides the McLarens of Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard (both running a one-stop strategy) made pit stops. Jacques Villeneuve, leading the race when the safety car came out, missed his pit stop on lap 13. As a result, he lost the lead to Michael Schumacher, who eventually won the race by 5.6 seconds from Villeneuve. The Canadian driver later explained that he had misunderstood the radio instruction to come in, due to the confusion brought about by the deployment of the safety car (as Villeneuve had already passed the site of the crash, and was not fully aware of what had happened). As a further consequence of Villeneuve's error, his teammate Damon Hill was instructed to pit by the Williams engineers on lap 14, only to then be told to stay out - however, as the team were delayed in relaying this change to Hill due to confusion brought about by Villeneuve's failure to make his stop, by the time the team radioed Hill to advise him he needed to remain out, he was already on his way into the pit lane, and had to use the emergency escape lane to rejoin the track. Hill was driving the spare Williams following a misfire in the Sunday morning warm-up session. By the time he finally got to make his pit stop, he had fallen to 13th, but he recovered to finish fifth.

Running in fourth place just after half distance, Gerhard Berger spun off in his Benetton while trying to pass Eddie Irvine's Ferrari, an error which dropped him to 12th. After setting a string of fastest laps he recovered to sixth by the end of the race, coincidentally thanks in part to Irvine's retirement with gearbox problems. Berger's Benetton teammate Jean Alesi finished fourth after Coulthard had spun off into retirement and crashed on lap 38.

The Tyrrells of Mika Salo and Ukyo Katayama finished in seventh and eighth places respectively; however, a fast early stop during the safety car period saw Salo briefly running as high as third at one point.

Race classification

Championship standings after the race

• Bold text indicates the World Champions. ;Drivers' Championship standings

;Constructors' Championship standings

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

References

| Previous_year's_race = 1995 Belgian Grand Prix | Next_year's_race = 1997 Belgian Grand Prix

References

1. "1996 Belgian GP". [[Motor Sport (magazine).
2. [http://classic.wunderground.com/history/airport/EBLB/1996/8/25/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo= Weather info for the 1996 Belgian Grand Prix] at Weather Underground
3. "Grand Prix Results: Belgian GP, 1996". Grandprix.com.
4. "Belgium 1996 – Qualifications". StatsF1.
5. "1996 Belgian Grand Prix Classification Qualifying". Motorsport Stats.
6. "1996 Belgian Grand Prix Weekend Results".
7. "1996 Belgian Grand Prix". formula1.com.
8. "Belgium 1996 - Championship • STATS F1".