Shop
Hill and Schumacher clashed at the season-ending Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide while battling for the lead, eliminating both from the race.
It was a controversial end to an emotional season that saw the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna.
Thrust into the role of team leader at Williams following Senna’s death, Hill rallied the team and mounted a serious challenge for the world championship.
Heading to Australia, he trailed Schumacher by a single point, effectively creating a winner-takes-all-all showdown.
At the race start, the German launched well from second to head the field into the first turn followed by Hill, who’d rounded team-mate for the weekend Nigel Mansell.
The title rivals pulled clear of the pack before a mistake approaching mid-distance saw the Benetton driver off the road.
“It was a whole season of drama because of the awful things that happened,” Hill recounted at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival.
“The championship was a tough year, and I’d closed the gap on Michael – I’d beaten him in Suzuka – and came here for a big showndown.”
The Australian GP weekend didn’t start well for Schumacher, who crashed heavily during Friday practice.
On Saturday, rain meant nobody was able to improve on the times they’d set the day prior, meaning Mansell was on pole courtesy of his lap on Friday (qualifying was then two sessions, one on Friday and another on Saturday, with the best time from either counting).
“Michael had a big crash going through the chicane at Turn 1 and 2 and went off into the barriers, so the pressure was clearly on him.
“He’d never won a world championship. I’d never won a world championship before, so it was all to play for.”
Against that backdrop, Schumacher took the lead at the race start, with Hill in second.
And so it remained through the opening stages before a mistake from Schumacher saw him off the road at East Terrace.
“We were going at it hammer and tongs throughout the first 20 or so laps; it was flat-out pace, and we were miles from everyone just trying to win,” Hill recalled.
“Eventually, he got slightly ahead of me because he went past a backmarker and I just held up, and then I couldn’t see him.
“So when I came around the corner, I saw him coming back on the track. I didn’t know he’d hit the wall – I just saw a guy coming back.
“Suzuka, the race before, I saw him going off the track and coming back on I thought this guy has got nine lives; he’s an escapologist.
“I thought he’d got away with it again, I’ve got to go for it. And the rest is history.”
The pair clashed turning onto East Terrace, launching Schumacher’s Benetton onto two wheels and retirement.
Hill, who’d dived to the inside of the 90-degree right-hander, had picked up damage to his front-left suspension when it impacted the right-rear of Schumacher’s car.
Though now in the lead, Hill car was mortally wounded and he could do nothing but limp back to the pits and retirement.
And so Schumacher won the first of his seven world championships while his rival was left to rue the missed opportunity.
The Englishman would go on to win the world championship with Williams in 1996 and remained in F1 until retiring at the end of 1999.
He is back in Adelaide this weekend as part of the Adelaide Motorsport Festival before heading to Melbourne as part of Sky Sports’ coverage of the Australian Grand Prix next weekend.
