August 1996, Williams won its 8th F1 constructors’ championship
On August 11, 1996, Williams clinched the constructor's title after Jacques Villeneuve's victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix. It was a season marked by the dominance of the team created by Patrick Williams, stemming from the duel between their two drivers, Graham Hill and rookie Jacques Villeneuve, who put up a surprising but fierce resistance.
The Williams team no longer regularly appears at the top of the rankings since the end of the duo composed of Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, which had allowed them to step on the podium of the constructor’s world championship twice in 2014 and 2015.
Today, the team, still based in Grove (Great Britain), is stuck in the depths of the standings and has finished in the bottom three positions of the championship for the past 5 seasons. However, in the 1990s, it was the most successful force on the grid. It is still the second most successful team in the history of Formula 1 (behind Ferrari), with 9 constructors’ championships and 7 drivers’ championships.
Williams, total domination
On August 11, 1996, the team created in 1977 clinches its eighth constructor’s title with 4 Grand Prix still to go that year. On this twelfth weekend of the season, Williams drivers Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve approach the Hungaroring knowing that the title is within reach for their team. It’s simple, in their FW18 cars they only need to score 2 small points to secure first place, while the season will end two months later in Suzuka, Japan.
In qualifying, the two Williams drivers are only surpassed by the only one capable of competing this year, the double reigning world champion, Michael Schumacher, who is competing in his first season with Ferrari. The rookie Villeneuve ranks 3rd and his teammate Hill comes to a stop 53 milliseconds behind the German, who takes his fourth pole position of the season.
The three men will lead the race, but in the final laps, Schumacher is forced to immobilize his F310 due to a problem with his accelerator. Hill, disadvantaged at the start because he was positioned on the wrong side of the track on the grid (the asphalt is more degraded on the right), is overtaken on the first lap by his young teammate, as well as by Jean Alesi who blocks him with his Benetton Renault for a long time. This costs the Briton dearly at the beginning of the race, but he gradually gains time in the final laps. Hill closes in on Villeneuve, to no avail. « Towards the end of the race, I was worried about Hill’s comeback […] But unless he made a mistake, I knew he couldn’t overtake me. », says the winner at the end of the day.
Hill-Villeneuve, internal duel at the top
16 more points on the scoreboard, mission accomplished. The Williams team is world champion for the eighth time, thus joining the Scuderia Ferrari in the ranking. That season, the FW18 reigns supreme, with 10 victories out of 12 races. Their dominance is such that after the Hungarian Grand Prix, Williams has more points than all the other teams combined. The scoring system was quite different in 1996. Only the top 6 scored points.
However, there remains one duel, four Grand Prix, and one driver’s title to pursue. The 25-year-old Quebecer Jacques Villeneuve won his third Grand Prix of the season in Budapest, also his third in his young career, and will come within 17 points of his experienced teammate at the top of the driver’s standings.
Finally, this 1996 season can be summarized as a clash between the two men, equipped with their Renault engines, the French brand that greatly dominates the period (as a Renault engine supplier, Renault is champion from 1992 to 1997). It is not the most media-covered rivalry, nor the most tense, for that matter. According to Villeneuve’s own admission, it is not a genuine camaraderie », but the two men never hated each other and simply exchanged pressure through statements, but above all fiercely confronted each other on the race tracks.
After this Hungarian Grand Prix, the two teammates will continue to battle each other, Newtown as he is nicknamed, even manages to reduce the gap to 13 points by finishing as the runner-up to Schumi in Spa, while Hill finishes in 5th place. In Monza, Villeneuve misses his chance: while the championship leader retires early, the Canadian finishes 7th, just outside the points.
Finally, Damon Hill will secure his first (and only) world championship title by finishing second behind his rival at Estoril and then triumphing at Suzuka. Meanwhile, Jacque Villeneuve is the runner-up in the world championship in his rookie season, an achievement that only Lewis Hamilton has been able to accomplish since.
