Bojan Vrbnjak
One way or another, twelve racing cars were involved in the collision, which, of course, caused millions in damage, which also created the conditions for the chain reaction triggered by David Coulthard with his McLarn, declared the largest group car in the history of Formula 1. Coulthard first claimed to have touched a car Eddie Irvine, but it later turned out that he drove onto the manhole cover, causing him to lose grip, crashing almost frontally into the fence, and from there he bounced back across the track.
They were involved in the collision one way or another Eddie Irvine (Ferrari), Alexander Wurz (Benetton), Rubens Barrichello (Stewart), Johnny Herbert (Sauber), Olivier Panis (Prost), Jarno Trulli (Prost), Mika Salo (Arst), Pedro Diniz (Arrows), Pedro Diniz (Arrows), Toranosuke Takagi (Tyrrell), Ricardo Rosset (Tyrrell) in Shinji Nakano (Minardi). Joseph Verstappen he managed to get his Stewart to the pits, but the car was too damaged to continue the race.
Interestingly, the caravan of racing cars has already left the most delicate part of the start procedure, a rather narrow right turn. The Source, and according to Coulthard’s input, is a real miracle (and of course the result of decades of prevention to improve safety in F1), that none of the racers or spectators along the track were seriously injured. Those who have been there know to say that the broken pieces of the race cars have turned into shrapnel flying all around.
For a thick hour, the start-finish line was occupied by workers from nearby car removal companies, who were driving away broken racing cars and cleaning the track, but of course they were surprised by the size of the collision, which caused them to lack vehicles and therefore took a long time. longer than the organizers expected.
A restart followed, David Coulthard however, that Sunday, August 30, 1998, he really didn’t have his day, as he did despite the intervention Jean Todt in McLarn's garage awkwardly retreating to the dominant Michael Schumacher, which he overtook by a lap. Coulthard he reduced his speed, but remained on the ideal line, and Schumacher collided with the Englishman due to poor visibility, and for the German the race was over. Schumacher went to McLarn's garage and to the commissioners, and after the race he also wanted to physically confront Coulthard, but all this was prevented by the mechanics of both teams.
In the end, he celebrated Damon Hill v Jordan, before Ralph Schumacher in Jean Alesi v Sauber. A week after the unfortunate event, Schumacher and Coulthard arranged a meeting and settled the dispute, but the fact remains that Schumacher may have lost the title of world champion he won in 1998 at Spa that year. Mika Hakkinen.
