Michael Schumacher wins the chaotic 1998 Canadian Grand Prix

The 1998 Canadian Grand Prix was one of Michael Schumacher’s more controversial Ferrari victories. Held at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on 7 June 1998, it was a race of restarts, safety cars, broken cars and irritated rivals. Schumacher won by 16.662 seconds from Giancarlo Fisichella, with Eddie Irvine third, but the route there was untidy even by late-1990s standards.

Background

The 1998 season was mainly a McLaren-Ferrari title fight. Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard had given McLaren a strong early advantage, while Ferrari and Schumacher were trying to keep the championship alive until their development caught up. Montreal offered long straights, hard braking and a habit of creating incidents. Nobody needed to ask it twice.

Coulthard started from pole, ahead of Schumacher and Hakkinen. The first start did not last long. Alesi, Herbert, Wurz and Trulli were involved in a first-corner crash, leading to a restart. On the second start Hakkinen suffered a gearbox problem almost immediately, removing the championship leader from the race before it had properly settled.

The race

Coulthard led early, but his McLaren later suffered a throttle-related problem. Schumacher remained in contention through the safety-car interruptions and the changing order. The most discussed moment came when he rejoined from a pit stop during a safety-car phase and moved across the track in front of Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s Williams. Frentzen went off and retired. Schumacher received a 10-second stop-go penalty for the incident.

That could have ended the victory bid. Instead, Schumacher recovered. He served the penalty, passed Damon Hill, and then benefited when Fisichella made his pit stop. Once back in clear air, the Ferrari had enough pace to build a cushion. Fisichella finished second for Benetton, Irvine completed the podium for Ferrari, and Jan Magnussen scored the only point of his Formula 1 career in sixth for Stewart.

Why it lingered

The race mattered for the championship because Hakkinen failed to score while Schumacher took ten points. It also added another entry to the long file marked Schumacher and racing ethics, a file that was already not short of paper after Adelaide 1994 and Jerez 1997.

Canada 1998 was not Schumacher’s cleanest win, nor Ferrari’s most elegant. It was, however, a very Schumacher-era result: speed, controversy, punishment, recovery and a final classification that still said Ferrari first. Montreal had produced a mess. Schumacher simply proved better than most at leaving the mess with the trophy.