The 1995 Monaco Grand Prix (formally the LIII Grand Prix de Monaco) was a Formula One motor race held on 28 May 1995 at the Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco. It was the fifth round of the 1995 Formula One season. The 78-lap race was won by Michael Schumacher for the Benetton team after starting from second position. Damon Hill finished second for Williams after starting from pole position and leading the first 23 laps of the race, ahead of Gerhard Berger in a Ferrari car. The remaining points-scoring positions were filled by Johnny Herbert in the second Benetton, Mark Blundell (McLaren) and Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Sauber). Schumacher's win was his third of the season thus far and extended his lead in the World Drivers' Championship over Hill to five points. It was also Renault's first win in the Monaco Grand Prix, as Benetton's engine supplier.
Schumacher won the race comfortably, over 30 seconds ahead of Hill. Hill's speed advantage in qualifying, in which he had set a lap time almost one second faster than Schumacher, vanished in the race, enabling Schumacher to follow him closely from the start, despite carrying a heavier fuel load for a one-stop pit strategy, as opposed to Hill's two. When Hill made his first pit stop, Schumacher took the lead, and stayed ahead of his rival for the remainder of the race. Hill also dropped behind the one-stopping Ferrari of Jean Alesi, but the latter crashed on lap 42 whilst attempting to avoid the lapped Ligier of Martin Brundle, who had spun in front of him. Hill's Williams teammate, David Coulthard, retired from the race due to a gearbox failure after initially running in third place. In total, sixteen of the 26 entrants failed to finish, including both drivers for the Simtek team, which subsequently ran out of money and withdrew from the sport before the Canadian Grand Prix. The race was also marked by an accident at the first corner of the first lap involving Coulthard, Alesi and Berger, which caused the track to become blocked and the race to be restarted as a result.
Report
Background Heading into the fifth race of the season, Benetton driver Michael Schumacher was leading the Drivers' Championship with 24 points, a single point ahead of Williams driver Damon Hill. The two Ferrari drivers, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger, lay third and fourth in the rankings with 14 and 13 points respectively, whilst David Coulthard and Johnny Herbert, in the second Williams and Benetton respectively, had scored 9 points each. Just four points separated these three teams in the Constructors' Championship, with Ferrari (27 points) leading Williams (26) and Benetton (23).Williams's and Benetton's totals do not match the combined totals scored by their drivers, as both teams had their WCC points from the 1995 Brazilian Grand Prix removed for fuel irregularities. After a trying start to the season, Schumacher had dominated the preceding Spanish Grand Prix, but both championships were open, with no strong favourite for the race victory.
There were two driver changes going into the event: McLaren driver Nigel Mansell was replaced by the team's test driver, Mark Blundell, and Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger was replaced by Williams test driver and reigning International Formula 3000 champion Jean-Christophe Boullion. Mansell's departure was the main talking point prior to the beginning of the race meeting, as it brought the World Champion's troubled relationship with McLaren to an end after just two races with the team. Mansell had made a part-time return to Formula One in as a replacement for the late Ayrton Senna at Williams, but was passed over in favour of Coulthard for 1995 and opted to sign for McLaren instead. When he tested the MP4-10 chassis for the first time, it became apparent that it had a major handling imbalance, and, more seriously, that he did not fit comfortably in the cockpit. Mansell was thus forced to miss the opening two races of the season whilst the team built a wider monocoque to accommodate him. He competed in the San Marino and Spanish Grands Prix in the wider MP4-10B, but struggled to match the pace of teammate Mika Häkkinen and retired his otherwise healthy car from the latter race with handling problems. Mansell and team principal Ron Dennis subsequently agreed a mutual termination of their contract, and Blundell was restored to the seat that he had already occupied in the first two races. Blundell was employed on a race-by-race basis. The split marked the end of Mansell's Formula One career. His presence was still strong at Monaco, however, as the official tickets and publicity material featured a prominent image of his McLaren.
Wendlinger had crashed heavily in practice for the previous year's Monaco Grand Prix, sustaining a serious head injury from which it took the rest of the season for him to recover. Since rejoining Sauber at the beginning of the current season, he had struggled to match his pre-accident form, lapping several seconds per lap slower than teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the first four Grands Prix. Sauber released a statement clarifying that Wendlinger had not been sacked, and that he would still test for the team with a view to improving his performance. Boullion, who made his Formula One début as a result, was loaned to Sauber by Frank Williams, who was keen to use the known quantity of his test driver to evaluate Frentzen's potential for a future race seat in his team. Frentzen was in his second season of Formula One, but this event also marked his first race start at Monaco, as Sauber had withdrawn him from the previous year's race after Wendlinger's accident.
The state of the Simtek team's finances was also a major topic of interest. On the Thursday before the race weekend, team principal Nick Wirth held a press conference in which he admitted that the outfit faced imminent closure unless it received money that had been promised by various sponsors. Wirth admitted that Simtek faced a budget shortfall of several million dollars needed to complete the season, part of which was due to him being the victim of "a broken deal". He also pledged to arrange a meeting of all Simtek's financial backers over the race weekend in an attempt to raise additional capital, and that the team would not travel to the following Canadian Grand Prix, an expensive "fly-away" race, unless a rescue package was negotiated successfully. The team was already reduced to three gearboxes for the Monaco race meeting.
Due to the configuration of the Circuit de Monaco, with its low average speed and abundance of low-speed corners, allied to the low-grip nature of the public road surface, the teams all set their cars up to produce the maximum amount of downforce and mechanical grip possible. Ferrari introduced a revised rear wing and diffuser design for the 412T2 chassis, allowing more space for downforce-generating winglets around the rear bodywork. The team also introduced two new suspension configurations, one used by Alesi and the other tested by Berger on his spare car. As was traditional at Monaco, Ferrari also brought an additional spare car, bringing the team's total number of chassis to four. The Sauber team introduced new front and rear wings and a revised diffuser, in addition to a slightly lightened C14 chassis design. Benetton, Footwork and Tyrrell also added additional flaps and wings to the rear bodywork of their cars, whilst the latter team also applied its "Hydrolink" suspension design to the rear of the 023 for the first time. Lead Forti driver Pedro Diniz was given a new monocoque which weighed less than the first two FG01 tubs to have been built, and Minardi débuted a new exhaust system on its M195 to increase the power produced by the Ford engine.
Practice and qualifying Two practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held from 09:30 to 11:15 local time on Thursday, and an identically timed session was also held on Saturday. Each driver was limited to 23 laps of free practice per day. The qualifying period was split into two one-hour sessions; the first was held on Thursday afternoon from 13:00 to 14:00 local time, with the second held on Saturday afternoon at the same time. The fastest time set by each driver from either session counted towards his final grid position. Each driver was limited to twelve laps per qualifying session.
Alesi set the pace in Thursday free practice, which took place in bright and sunny weather conditions, with a time of 1:25.457. Schumacher and Hill were second and third, separated from their teammates by the two improved McLarens, with Häkkinen ahead of the returning Blundell. Berger was over two seconds slower than Alesi with the ninth-fastest lap time. Schumacher was unhappy with the handling of his car, and so the rear end of the B195 was stripped down for a precautionary check before qualifying. Further back, Frentzen set the eighteenth-fastest time after his Sauber shed its engine cover during the session. Boullion fared even worse, as he crashed at the Nouvelle Chicane in a manner reminiscent of Wendlinger's accident the year before, but he was unhurt. Simtek's shortage of gearboxes was also apparent: lead driver Jos Verstappen's unit only allowed him to complete five laps before developing problems, but teammate Domenico Schiattarella set an encouraging 14th-fastest time.
Thursday qualifying was held in similar weather conditions to practice, but was interrupted by a brief shower of rain close to the end of the session. Alesi carried his form over from free practice, nudging the crash barriers lining the circuit on more than one occasion to set a provisional pole position time of 1:23.754. Berger was also impressive, power-sliding through Casino Square, to the delight of the crowd, on his way to the third-fastest time, although he complained that Alesi had held him up on what he thought would have been his quickest lap of the session. The form of the Ferraris came as something of a surprise, as the 41T2's unique V12 engine configuration theoretically produced less torque than its rivals, a disadvantage on a circuit as tight as Monaco. Alesi said that he believed the results of the session were due to the extreme effort that he and Berger were putting into their driving overcoming any deficiencies with the car. The Ferraris were split by Schumacher, who felt that the rain shower had prevented him from fulfilling his potential, as he did not complete his full quota of 12 laps as a result of the track conditions becoming slower. His teammate, Herbert, took provisional sixth place. Of the Williams drivers, Hill was fourth, but Coulthard admitted that he was still learning the track on his way to 11th, 2.8 seconds slower than Alesi's best. Häkkinen continued McLaren's promising form with a provisional fifth place, but was fined $10,000 for ignoring yellow flags during the season. Blundell was back in eighth after crashing into the barriers in the closing minutes of the session.