The 1995 British Grand Prix (formally the XLVIII British Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on 16 July 1995 at Silverstone Circuit, Silverstone, Northamptonshire, England. It was the eighth round of the 1995 Formula One World Championship. Johnny Herbert for the Benetton team won the 61-lap race from fifth position. Jean Alesi finished second in a Ferrari, with David Coulthard third in a Williams car. The remaining points-scoring positions were filled by Olivier Panis (Ligier), Mark Blundell (McLaren) and Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Sauber). Herbert's victory was his first in Formula One, and the Benetton team's fifth of the season.
The race was dominated, however, by the fight between World Drivers' Championship protagonists, Michael Schumacher (Benetton) and Damon Hill (Williams). Hill, who started from a pole position achieved during qualifying sessions held in variable weather conditions, retained his lead during the opening stages of the race whilst Schumacher, who was alongside him on the starting grid, fell behind Alesi in the run to the first corner. Despite being held up behind the slower Ferrari until it made a pit stop, Schumacher used a more favourable one-stop strategy to move ahead of Hill, who made two pit stops for fuel and tyres, on lap 41. Four laps later, Hill attempted to pass Schumacher, but the two collided and were forced to retire from the race. This promoted Herbert and Coulthard, who were battling for third place, into the fight for the lead. Coulthard passed Herbert, but dropped to third, behind Alesi, after incurring a stop-go penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
Background Heading into the eighth race of the season, Benetton driver Michael Schumacher was leading the Drivers' Championship with 46 points; ahead of Williams driver Damon Hill on 35, and the two Ferrari drivers, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger, on 26 and 17 points respectively. The Constructors' Championship was closer, with Benetton on 48 points leading Ferrari and Williams on 43 and 42 points respectively. After a hesitant start to the season, Schumacher had won three of the previous four Grands Prix, and arrived at Silverstone as the man to beat. Hill, on the other hand, had won the 1994 British Grand Prix and was eager to repeat the feat in front of his home fans. He had also set the fastest lap time in pre-event testing at Silverstone during the final week of June, almost a second in front of teammate David Coulthard, and a further 0.2 seconds ahead of Schumacher. The McLaren, Jordan, Footwork and Pacific teams also took part in these test sessions. Hill was also under some additional pressure going into the weekend, as his wife, Georgie, was due to give birth to their third child imminently.
There was one driver change going into the event: the Footwork team's lead driver, Gianni Morbidelli, was replaced by compatriot Massimiliano Papis, an International Formula 3000 race winner who had also been the test driver for Team Lotus in 1994, before the outfit withdrew from the sport ahead of the 1995 season. Papis brought valuable sponsorship from Altea, a tie manufacturer, to the underfunded team, which supplemented the income already being provided by his pay driver teammate, Taki Inoue, to cover the team's budget for the year. Morbidelli was kept on as the team's test driver, and returned to racing action at the later in the year.
Pre-race discussion centred on the following year's driver line-up, with Schumacher rumoured to be moving to Ferrari to replace Berger, who was considering a move to Williams. Hill's future was also uncertain, as was his teammate David Coulthard's, due to the McLaren team possessing an option on his services for . Sauber driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen was also linked to a possible vacant position for 1996 in the Williams team. Schumacher's future plans dictated the rest of the driver market, due to his status as the reigning World Champion—and, indeed, the only such champion of all the contemporary drivers—and reputation as the best driver currently in Formula One. It was also reported that Schumacher's teammate, Johnny Herbert, was in imminent danger of losing his Benetton seat to test driver Jos Verstappen, who was available due to the collapse of the Simtek team after the and was contractually owed race drives by team principal Flavio Briatore. Despite taking a podium finish earlier in the year, Herbert had rarely been close to Schumacher's pace and had only completed two laps in the two previous Grands Prix. A potential new entry was also being discussed: the Japanese racing car constructor Dome was in the process of building a Formula One car with which to enter the World Championship in .
Several teams had made modifications to their cars in preparation for the event. Ferrari made changes to the 412T2 chassis's sidepods to improve airflow around the tyres, and reverted to a diffuser design used earlier in the season. The Ligier team had Martin Brundle's car fitted with power steering for the first time and he chose to use it for the race, but teammate Olivier Panis, who had run with the system earlier in the season, decided against it. McLaren revised its troubled MP4/10B chassis's suspension geometry, and Mika Häkkinen's car was equipped with a more powerful version of its Mercedes V10 engine for Sunday's warm-up session and the race itself. Team principal Ron Dennis also re-hired experienced designer Steve Nichols, who had worked for the outfit in the 1980s, in the week before the race. Footwork also arrived with revised suspension, whilst the Jordan team ran with brake disc sensors on its car. Further down the field, the Forti team introduced the revised version of its FG01 chassis for Roberto Moreno. Lead driver Pedro Diniz had first driven the car in its revised specification at the preceding . The revised aerodynamic package included a higher nose and new sidepods. Both drivers also tested a new development of the Ford-Cosworth ED engine in practice.
In the week leading up to the race, Williams chief designer Adrian Newey reignited the controversy over the similarities between the Benetton B195 and Ligier JS41 chassis, which had first flared up at the season-opening . Despite the fact that a Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) investigation had declared the JS41 legal earlier in the season, Newey stated that "as far as suspension geometry and aerodynamics are concerned, I'd say they are identical. [...] Taken to a logical conclusion, we'll be in an IndyCar position. It is very dangerous." As part of the Williams team's own preparations for the race, Hill tested a Williams FW17 equipped with brakes made from steel, rather than the standard carbon fibre, and was reputedly impressed by their performance.
Practice and qualifying
Two practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held from 09:30 to 11:15 local time on Friday, 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 Friday 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.
Schumacher set the pace in Friday free practice, which took place in dry and cloudy weather conditions, with a time of 1:29.238. Hill was less than four hundredths of a second behind, ahead of Alesi, Coulthard, Herbert and Berger; the drivers from the top three teams in the Constructors' Championship thus filled the top six positions. Despite his fastest time, Schumacher was unhappy with the handling of his Benetton, reporting more understeer than had been present in pre-event testing at the circuit.
Weather conditions for Friday qualifying were dry and sunny, albeit blustery, which meant that drivers had to cope with strong crosswinds in the circuit's many high-speed corners. The session was marked by an intense fight for pole position between championship protagonists Schumacher and Hill, which was watched by a crowd of 37,000 spectators. Schumacher initially set the pace with a time of 1:29.151, which he later improved to 1:28.387. Hill initially struggled to match his rival's time in the final, twistier sector of the lap, but made a set-up change and took provisional pole with a time of 1:28.124 in the final ten minutes. Schumacher—who had increased the level of downforce on his car to compensate for the understeer, only to find that the reduction in straightline speed was too great—was demoted to second position, but was confident that he and the team could improve the car's handling for Saturday's session. Coulthard was more than 0.8 seconds slower than Hill in third place, and blamed the strong crosswinds for making his car feel very unstable at the rear end. Berger and Alesi set the fourth and sixth fastest times respectively for Ferrari, both drivers disadvantaged by a lack of straightline speed compared to the Renault-powered Williams and Benetton cars, and the fact that the Italian team was not allowed to take part in pre-event testing at the circuit as per the FIA's regulations. Team principal Jean Todt, however, described lack of testing as "a feeble excuse" for the team's loss of form compared with earlier races in the season. Herbert separated the Ferrari drivers in the second Benetton, also complaining of rear-end stability problems with his car. Eddie Irvine set the seventh quickest time in his Jordan despite suffering a recurring brake balance problem, ahead of Häkkinen in the faster of the two McLaren cars. This formation was continued on the fifth row of the grid, which was occupied by Rubens Barrichello in the other Jordan and Mark Blundell in the other McLaren. Brundle qualified in 11th position, more than a second in front of Ligier teammate Panis in 13th; both drivers complained that their cars rode the bumps on the track badly. The two were split by Frentzen in the quicker of the two Sauber drivers, who set a best time 1.5 seconds faster than his own teammate, Jean-Christophe Boullion, in 16th. Ukyo Katayama was 14th quickest for the Tyrrell team, ahead of Pierluigi Martini's Minardi, the latter's best qualifying performance of the season. Behind Boullion, Papis set the 17th fastest time in his first Formula One qualifying session, split from teammate Taki Inoue by Luca Badoer in the second Minardi, who was unable to complete his allocated laps after spinning and breaking the car's gearbox. The times were completed by Diniz and Moreno in the Forti cars, who sandwiched Bertrand Gachot's Pacific car. Two drivers failed to set times: Mika Salo failed to stop his Tyrrell at the pit-lane weighbridge despite the presence of a red light—indicating that his car had been selected to be weighed—and the stewards excluded his times as a result. Andrea Montermini did not take part in the session at all due to a failure of his car's brake master cylinder; the underfunded Pacific team lacked the resources to bring a spare car to the event.