Barnard remembers Hill’s ’97 Hungary heartache: ‘We could’ve won that race’

25 years ago, Damon Hill and Arrows so nearly won the Hungarian GP, only to have it cruelly snatched away – tech chief JohnBarnard remembers the tale

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Hill makes the crucial move in Hungary – but victory wasn't forthcoming

Michael Coopern/Getty Images

Nicholas Latifi qualified bang-last for this year’s F1 season-opening Bahrain GP, in a problematic Williams car which hasn’t met the expectations of its team.

Fast-forward to Budapest two weeks ago, and the Canadian took advantage of conditions to set the fastest time in FP3, before clocking the quickest first sector of all in Q1, only to then lose out from a last-corner slide, finishing slowest of all…

We’re stretching the comparisons slightly here, but those couple of moments did have brief parallels with one of F1’s great near-misses: Damon Hill’s almost-win with the struggling Arrows squad – 25 years ago today at the 1997 Hungarian GP – which came after he qualified 20th for that year’s opening race.

Looking back on that day in which the backmarkers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, Arrows’ then-tech chief John Barnard tells Motor Sport that “It was a race we really should have won.”

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Not a dream Arrows debut in Melbourne

Pascal Rondeau /Allsport/Getty Images

After having finally secured the F1 crown with Williams in ’96, Hill found himself at the new-look Arrows team for the following season, driving the problematic A18.

The car had the rare privilege of having had had the attentions of not one, but two legendary designers: first Frank Dernie, who oversaw its creation, and then later Barnard following the former’s departure.

The main reasons which caused the Arrows car’s initial difficulties would become a familiar theme in the team’s latter days, as Dernie explains.

“It was the shortest time period we’d ever done a car,” he tells Motor Sport.

“I’d done a contract to be technical director at Ligier and had all my people there, then at the last moment [team boss] Tom [Walkinshaw] decided he would go and buy Arrows instead.”

“It was a question of how long it would last before it failed” Frank Dernie

Walkinshaw had been team manager at Ligier, later attempting to buy the team for ‘97 and link it up with his own TWR concern. When this didn’t work, Dernie, who was contracted to TWR and not the French concern, was drafted into Arrows instead, now newly-based at Leafield when Walkinshaw took over control from Jackie Oliver and Footwork.

“By the time we basically got sorted, it was too late to do a car and certainly to make it,” Dernie says.

“The biggest real problem with the car was that we went to the first race with every single hydraulic O-ring groove having been machined to the wrong tolerance.

“It wasn’t a question of if we would get a hydraulic leak, it was a question of how long it would last before it failed – and that’s pretty demoralizing for everybody.”

The sight of Hill ignominiously pulling off his smoking Arrows on the formation lap of the ’97 Australian GP was a depressing metaphor for where the team was at. Sadly, the suspect component was also one which would come back to haunt the team.

A further four retirements – and five for team-mate Pedro Diniz – added to lowly finishes left a team which had big hopes for 1997 with 0 points after eight races.

Early A19 races were difficult, to put it mildly

Early A19 races were difficult, to put it mildly

Mike Cooper /Allsport/Getty Images

Dernie quit, citing too many broken promises from Walkinshaw in what he describes as “a very difficult time for me.

“We had designed some new parts for the front end, sorted out the weight distribution, but they weren’t ready until Hungary…”

In came Barnard – his UK-based Ferrari Design & Development operation was renamed B3 Technologies after his departure from the Scuderia, and its first project was to help Arrows get back on track.

The former McLaren, Benetton and Ferrari designer was handed the not-so-small combined task of helping get Leafield up to speed as a fully-functioning F1 operation, designing the ’98 car and sorting out the fortunes of the one currently on track.

“I had a lot on my plate,” he says with some understatement. “But it wasn’t anything I hadn’t done before.”

From the archive

Barnard came in for the Canadian GP – the design guru had immediately begun to ring the changes, not just in the factory’s work processes but also on the current car ‘97 itself.

“The first thing that struck me was that the airbox intake was too small,” he says. “So we had to cut the roll hoop off the chassis and put a whole new one on to increase the air intake, which picked up about three or four kilometres-an-hour top speed.

“We also made some changes suspension-wise also and more on the weight distribution.”

Once Barnard had deduced what the car’s main issue was, himself and the team were able to push on with more alterations.

“When I initially started, we just couldn’t get the front to work – some of that was in the tyre,” says Barnard – Arrows were on of just four teams using Bridgestones that year, along with Stewart, Prost and Minardi.

“To get over that, I had to put more load on the front, and that meant changing the aero balance, changing the spring set-up, the ride heights, quite big alterations from front to back.

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Questions lingered over Hill’s motivation

Mike Cooper /Allsport/Getty Images

“Then I started adding weight to the nose of the car, which for me normally would be an absolute ‘no-no’, because you’re increasing your polar moments by throwing weight out the front, but it helped to get a bit of temperature in the front tyres.”

Combined with changes on race weekends, all the modifications started to pay dividends at Hill’s and the team’s home GP.

Though everyone remembers Hungary as Arrows’ ‘bolt from the blue’, Barnard believes it was Silverstone that was the real key moment for the team.

“I started listening in on the radio with Damon, [who was] talking to race engineers,” remembers Barnard. “I jumped in at that point, because I could see that we needed to change on the set-up [of the car].

“We made some, and we shot up the order.”

Hill still only qualified 12th for that year’s British GP, but a late retirement for Shinji Nakano in the race promoted him into the final points-paying position – he and Arrows were up and running at last.

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Arrows car started to improve after changes from Barnard and co – nowhere more so than Hungary

Darren Heath/Getty Images

There had been rumours that Hill was struggling to muster the will to go on in such a miserable defence of his championship crown, but Barnard found him to be the right man for the job – when he was in the mood.

“I think some times he was more motivated than others,” says Barnard. “Some races you could see there was it was there, whilst at others you felt like, ‘Come on, Damon, there’s three or four more places we can get on the grid here if you really give it one!’ – it seemed like the motivation just wasn’t there, but that just a feeling.

“He had talent, he could be quick and he could push, but he was wasn’t a ‘Nigel Mansell’.

“Damon had to get the response from the car to get him going, he wasn’t about to drive over a problem.

“We started to get the car working better, kept doing little things to it, tweaking it, changing the setup, etc. By the time Hungary came along, it was it wasn’t working too badly.”

Hill, a Budapest specialist, always went well at the circuit, and the A18’s underpowered Yamaha engine was less of a disadvantage on the tight and twisty circuit.

Coupled with the fact that the Bridgestone compound proved much more pliable than the softer compounds some of the Goodyear teams chose, Arrows suddenly had a decent race car on its hands.

“When you get a tyre that works with that surface, then you’re away,” emphasises Barnard.

“When look at F1 cars today, with brand new regulations, you think someone would make a bit of a discovery and a bit of jump, whilst somebody would go the wrong way.

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Bridgestone’s compound proved to be just the tyre for Budapest

Darren Heath/Getty Images

“You would expect the field spread to be much bigger, but it isn’t, and a huge part of that is the tyres – they’re all using the same ones.

“When you’re all using different compounds, someone can get ahead of the game.”

And so Hill demonstrated – he put his Arrows third in qualifying at Hungary, just 0.372sec off pole-sitter Michael Schumacher. From 20th on the grid and 5.347sec off the pace is Australia, that was some mark-up.

“I’m very, very pleased, I was having a bash,” said Hill after the session. “We could win, there’s no reason why we couldn’t.”

The confidence wasn’t misplaced, and from the clean side of the grid n race day Hill shot into second place, ahead of Jacques Villeneuve and right behind Schumacher.

The ’96 champion followed the German for ten laps and, almost unbelievably, could see that the race was coming to him.

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Hill had a commanding lead in Hungary

Grand Prix Photo

“The [Ferrari’s] Goodyears were just too soft and they were graining up like hell and causing him all sorts of grief,” Hill told Adam Cooper in 2003. “So he was a sitting duck, really. Except that this was Hungary, a track virtually impossible to pass on.”

At the end of lap 10 Schumacher had a snap of oversteer exiting the final corner though, and Hill was on the Ferrari in a flash – the Brit took his chance and dived down the inside.

After the most painful of seasons, he was in a winning position again.

“I’m almost bursting into laughter by this point,” Hill told Sky Sports in 2020. “I’ve just overtaken Michael Schumacher in a Ferrari, and I’m in an Arrows, and I’m leading a grand prix. I just couldn’t believe it!

From the archive

“Once I got past, I got into the same mode as if I was driving a Williams, which was, ‘Put the hammer down and get out of here.’”

Hill pulled away at almost three seconds a lap, and it look as though the race was almost in his pocket – a scenario almost too good to be true.

And it was – with a margin of 33sec, Hill had less than two laps to go when his throttle started to feel rather peculiar.

“The blasted thing broke down, one of the O-rings in the throttle linkage hydraulics failed,” laments Barnard.

“Of course, these days they’d have been tested to hell run on a rolling road back in the factory for hours and days on end meaning, theoretically, you wouldn’t get those things happening – although Ferrari still don’t seem to have quite cracked that!”

Hill did manage the nurse the car home as Villeneuve blasted past on the last lap, celebrating his runners-up spot gamely on the rostrum.

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Hill embraces Villeneuve after the race

Mike Cooper /Allsport

“It was a bittersweet thing,” remembered Hill to Sky. “We had Jackie Oliver who had been there with them [formerly as team boss] his whole life, and he was absolutely heartbroken and in tears at the end. It was cruel to take it away at the end like that.”

It would be the last podium an Arrows would ever score, and Barnard views it very much as a sliding doors moment for a team which would go into administration and close its doors five years later.

“It’s a shame,” he says. “If we had won in Hungary, I’m sure it would probably have affected sponsorship as well.

“It’s not just motivation in the team, but motivation for outside people to get involved.

“’Wow, is this the next coming team? Are they going to move up? Should we be there in at the ground floor?’

“These are the kinds of things that roll out from a result like that.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t win it, but it was pretty close.”