1999 ORAL HISTORY: Part 2 – Irvine steps forward, underdogs Jordan put up a fight, and Hakkinen hits trouble

Some 25 years have now passed since a drama-filled Formula 1 campaign that remains etched in the memories of drivers, team members and fans. A thrilling battle between giants McLaren and Ferrari, Michael Schumacher being sidelined by a heavy crash, underdog teams triumphing and the title getting decided at the very final race – the 1999 season had twists and turns aplenty. In a special reflective feature mini-series, we caught up with a host of personalities involved in F1’s 50th year for a special trip down memory lane. Tap here to read Part I, and continue reading for the second instalment…

Irvine steps up to challenge Hakkinen

In Schumacher’s absence, it was left to ‘number two’ Eddie Irvine to step up and take the fight to Mika Hakkinen, with the next two races proving to be an ideal start for the Northern Irishman. After capitalising on the first-lap clash between team mates Hakkinen and David Coulthard in Austria to take his second victory of the season, a third followed swiftly in Germany, where the Flying Finn suffered a moment that lived up to his nickname with a terrifying high-speed tyre failure.

Ferrari then employed team orders at Hockenheim by moving Schumacher’s replacement, Mika Salo, aside to give Irvine the winner’s trophy and the championship lead. From there, the battle between the McLaren and Ferrari drivers ebbed and flowed, with Hakkinen claiming a much-needed victory in Hungary and a second-place finish in Belgium to edge back ahead of Irvine and enter the final four-race run with a one-point advantage. It was all to play for…

1999 ORAL HISTORY: Part 1 – McLaren vs Ferrari, Hakkinen vs Schumacher, and drama at Silverstone

Louise Goodman, ITV F1 reporter: “Eddie was very much there as Michael’s number two, but he was already stepping up. All F1 drivers are competitive beasts, so while he was happy to accept his position and ranking within the team, in terms of Michael’s very much the number one, for him that was like, ‘Fine, I’ll just learn from him, and when the time comes…’ I think he was a lot closer to snapping at Michael’s heels and became more of a threat from the start of that season.”

Enrico Zanarini, Eddie Irvine’s manager: “Eddie showed his true talent after Silverstone because, of course, his talent was often overshadowed by Michael’s. He did very well, started to score [more] points, to win races. He was very happy and we were very happy. We took the lead of the team, won three races and challenged very strongly the McLarens of Hakkinen and Coulthard. We went race-by-race, hoping to challenge for the [title]. We really believed we could do it – we really believed.”

Mika Hakkinen, McLaren driver: “I knew when Michael was out of the [title] race, all I had to do was what I was doing, keep concentrating on my driving, winning races, going home and winning a world championship. But it didn’t work out like that, I tell you! We started having some technical issues, I started making mistakes, Eddie was constantly scoring points, his team mate was helping, my team mate was not helping…

LIGHTS TO FLAG: Mika Hakkinen on his horrific Adelaide accident, beating Michael Schumacher, and life after F1

“In one sense, I understood the side of the team, it’s a constructors’ championship, but I started getting upset – upset because I wished the team would have helped me more. What that means is they should have called the radio to David, ‘Let Mika past, he’s behind you’, but I understood that David, goddammit, he didn’t want to let me past! It was [making] me a bit nervous and [adding] a bit more pressure.

“In Austria, did I expect that [collision]? Naturally, no, I’m not expecting that because, come on, let’s just defend our positions and take the victory. David has a very strong character and he has his very straight personal opinions, so sometimes it’s difficult to move somebody out of that. You are your personality and it is what it is, either you accept it or you don’t accept it, but at that time we were both young, our egos were here, I was a world champion – things like that. But of course, the team had a lot of discussions with David and I think it was important to clear it up as quickly as possible, that negativeness, and move forward.”

Claudio Berro, Head of Communications, Ferrari: “To put Mika Salo in place of Michael was a very quick decision – one day or two days. When Mika gave the lead to Eddie at Hockenheim, okay, he lost a fantastic, unique victory, but then Jean Todt gave a lot of opportunities to him in the future with GT racing. He thanked Mika for giving the possibility to Eddie to win the race. At the end of the race, he was absolutely normal. Everybody went to Mika saying, ‘Thank you, thank you’, but he was really, really simple [in his approach]. He was a very good guy and very intelligent – not one word wrong with the media. My relationship with him was fantastic the whole time.”

Mark Arnall, Mika Hakkinen’s performance coach: “I think you kind of gear yourself up for a fight with Michael in a slightly different way to gearing yourself up to fight anyone else. Michael was so good and it was always so close between him and Mika. After Michael had the crash, you were kind of thinking there’s no way Eddie’s going to be able to compete in the same way as Michael would. He’s quick, the Ferrari was a great car, but Michael was just so good and so consistent. Then it turned out to be a big fight between him and Mika. Obviously, there were mistakes made on both sides and it kind of went backwards and forwards.

“What we hadn’t seen up until that point at Ferrari was the other driver being allowed to perform at that level. Michael was obviously the number one driver and you always saw the other driver coming second. Whereas in McLaren there wasn’t a designated number one, per se. I think from that point of view, it’s just one of these situations where the perception’s different, because you view that you’re fighting against a number two driver, whereas the reality is when they’re allowed to win races and compete with you, it’s a slightly different story.”

Jordan brilliantly mix it with McLaren and Ferrari

While McLaren and Ferrari were the two established teams securing the majority of the spoils as the race weekends ticked by, the 1999 season also saw the plucky Jordan Grand Prix outfit build on their breakthrough one-two finish at the previous year’s rain-soaked Belgian round and join the fight at the front at several Grands Prix.

Having finished second and third in the opening two races in Australia and Brazil, the fired-up Heinz-Harald Frentzen – aiming to rebuild his reputation after a stint at Williams that failed to meet expectations – delivered a stunning drive during another wet race at Magny-Cours to beat Hakkinen to victory on an inspired one-stop strategy, and then picked up the pieces when the McLaren driver spun off at Monza to stand on the top step of the podium again.

But although the 199 created under Mike Gascoyne’s technical leadership was a podium contender in Frentzen’s hands at most races, and gave him an outside shot at the championship, it was the polar opposite for world champion team mate Damon Hill, whose illustrious F1 career came to a low-key end amid on- and off-track struggles.

BEYOND THE GRID: Heinz-Harald Frentzen on being Germany’s F1 cult hero

Sam Michael, Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s Race Engineer: “The French Grand Prix… To call it a lottery would probably be generous, but you had to not stuff up. You had to get everything right, but even then, there was a high chance it was going to go wrong for you. Heinz was there at the end and he managed to keep a car on the road that was significantly heavier than anyone else around him due to being filled with fuel to get to the end of race, and to do that is hard. Like all good drivers, he was anxious at the beginning of the second stint, but he drove so well, didn’t make a mistake when many around him were spinning off the road. His anti-stall system triggered at the hairpin, and that cost us a good chunk of time as well, and even with many variables, he still won.

“What was fantastic about it was we’d just had that big accident in Canada due to a brake failure… Heinz went to hospital, he had some internal bruising and a crack in his spine, and the words the doctor used in Montreal were, ‘You’ve broken the bones in your back’. When you had an accident like that, you had to get signed off by Sid Watkins. In France, I remember going with Heinz up to Sid, on the Thursday before practice, and we were nervous about getting signed off. We went into the room, and of course we had briefed Heinz beforehand, Sid looked up and said, ‘What are you guys doing here?’. We said, ‘We’ve come to get signed off’. He said, ‘Yeah, you’re signed off, it’s all done’.

“What’s the saying? When you’ve sold the car, stop talking. I remember thinking, ‘Let’s get out of this room’. Heinz got annoyed by it because he thought, ‘Hang on, I got injured in the Canadian Grand Prix, I’m more injured than what Sid’s saying’. I’m saying, ‘Don’t say that, it doesn’t matter, he’s signed you off, it’s all good, let’s get out of here’. Fortunately for us, Sid wouldn’t listen. Fast forward three days, Heinz wins the Grand Prix and on Sunday night, Sid comes past the garage and says, ‘I told you he wasn’t injured… As if you could win a Grand Prix when you’ve got a broken back’.”

Mark Gallagher, Head of Marketing, Jordan: “In parallel to Heinz having an amazing season in 1999, Damon had a very difficult time. Something that doesn’t often get written about, but is a fact, is that midway through that Magny-Cours race, Damon announced his retirement. When Damon got back to the paddock, he was really fed up and told BBC Radio 5 Live and everyone at the back of the paddock that he was retiring. But, of course, that news story got buried because of what happened next, when Heinz won the race.

“What then took place was a very difficult moment between Damon and Eddie [Jordan, Team Principal], where Damon wanted to stop, but he wanted to be paid, and frankly Eddie didn’t want to pay him, otherwise he would have to keep going. Instead, Damon kept going for the balance of the season and it wasn’t a very happy time. That French Grand Prix from my perspective was a very bittersweet day, because Damon was struggling and Heinz was able to deliver the win. It was a great victory, but from a communications side, it was a difficult afternoon for the team.”

David Tremayne, F1 journalist: “[The situation with] Damon was one of the things that stood out the most [from 1999]. I’d never seen him so wound up. He was very scared about F1, which surprised me. Okay, Michael had his accident, but if you look at 1999, five years after Imola, you didn’t really go to races being frightened of what would happen if someone had a big shunt, because so much had happened on the safety front. I think with Damon, he felt he was getting closer to his dad’s age [when he was killed in a plane crash] and all that sort of thing. It was just an interesting insight into how someone’s psychological state was so important to how they performed.

“Heinz was the star in the team most of that year, and Damon was bloody good in 1998, but it was as if he’d lost the need to prove something. In retrospect, you could see how much he was struggling. He actually did want to stop mid-season, but Eddie just wouldn’t let him do it because there was nobody who would satisfy [Jordan title sponsor] Benson & Hedges’ requirement for a Brit. Sometimes it peters out when you’re in a bad car, but he was actually in a pretty damn good car. I always liked Damon, so to see him struggling that year, I thought it was very sad.”

F1 ICONS: Damon Hill on his father, two-time world champion and triple crown winner Graham Hill

Sam Michael: “Like all great drivers who don’t take anything for granted, Heinz felt he had to prove himself. I’ll always remember when we went to Monza for testing. It was around a month before the Grand Prix. We went out, Heinz did one run, he came in after five or so timed laps, got out of the car and said to me, ‘You could put the car in the truck, we’re going to win the Grand Prix with this car – it’s that good’. He’d driven around Monza quite a few times in his career in F1 and different categories and said the car was perfect.

“Of course, we were helped [in the race] by Mika’s accident, so if that hadn’t happened Mika would have won, based on McLaren’s performance over the weekend. But Heinz didn’t put a foot wrong that weekend and it went back to that test session that we did there. When you get offered opportunities in F1, you’ve got to make the most of them when they come. Heinz certainly did that, and so did the Jordan team.”

A massive blow to Hakkinen’s title push

As referenced by Michael above, Hakkinen was left reeling on Ferrari’s home soil when a mistake under braking for the first chicane sent his McLaren spinning off the track and out of the race. His reaction was there for the world to see as helicopter footage captured the pure rage of him throwing his gloves on the floor and then the emotions pouring out when he knelt and cried into his hands in the trees. Added to his Imola error earlier in the season, it was another huge, missed opportunity as the title battle entered its closing stages.

The only positive for the reigning world champion was that Irvine had problems of his own at Monza and could finish no higher than sixth, giving him a single point. That was nonetheless enough to put Irvine level with Hakkinen on 60 points ahead of the final three races at the Nurburgring, new venue Sepang and Suzuka, with the latter having to draw on the mental strength he mentioned previously to put the moment behind him and come back fighting for the title run in.

Mika Hakkinen: “It was a very weird situation at Monza because in qualifying we were using all the gears in one lap, which means in that particular corner in qualifying we used first gear, but in the race we could not use first gear, as we needed a gear for the start. I was going flat out in the race. Once, when I was coming to the end of the straight, I selected accidentally first gear and it locked the rear tyres. Normally, when you come from second to first you have a throttle flip – automatically it goes very high – and that way you won’t lock the rear tyres, but this time it locked the rear tyres.

“The engine died [after the spin] and the game was over. It was a mistake, but a driver mistake. It was emotionally very difficult to handle it. I was on antibiotics that race, I was sick, and I knew I had to win. We were at Monza, in Italy, the Ferrari track, basically, so all that had an influence and [the] pressure [was] building up on me. It was a terrible weekend in terms of the result, but I learned a lot!”

Louise Goodman: “Mika in the bushes is an image I remember really, really strongly. I did a track walk with Mika in Monza a couple of years ago, just going to that point with him. Clearly, he’d made a huge mistake, he knew he’d made a huge mistake… He’d gone off into the bushes to have a good sob, because that’s what he obviously needed. The fact that moment was caught on a camera on a helicopter was so unfortunate.

“I think you’ve got to have a pretty iron heart not to feel for somebody [in that situation]. We’ve all made mistakes. I think no matter what team you’re working for, or whatever your position is as an objective journalist, you’ve got to have a little bit of a feeling for somebody who is that distressed and that distraught. It was such a strong, visual image of a guy crouching down and sobbing.”

David Tremayne: “I remember how unhappy Mika was with himself, which was very typical Mika. He was such an honest guy, would never try and hide a mistake, and would always admit to it. That was a very public one, a really silly one to make, and he knew that, which I think made it even worse. He could have walked that race and he could have had a much more relaxed remainder to the season. It was a lot to throw away. That’s the great thing about Mika, because he would just bounce back from things like that. But I’d never seen him quite so upset with himself. You’d just never forgive yourself, would you?”

Mark Arnall: “I think in any championship fight, in any sport, you’re going to get quite emotional, because you literally train and dedicate your life to that profession, to winning a championship in that situation. I think if you look at any driver’s career, they might sometimes be lucky in their whole career just to have the chance to win one race, and to have the opportunity to have a car that’s capable of winning a championship, there aren’t so many of those opportunities that come around, so I think it puts a little bit more pressure on you.

“With any driver, if there’s an engine blow up, it’s frustrating, you’re p***** off, but there’s nothing you’ve done wrong, the car’s just let go and you can’t finish. If you’re the one that makes the mistake, it’s always harder to deal with. You kick yourself for it, the car was going well, you’re in the position you’re in and you spin off. I think the drivers always punish themselves mentally more after they’ve made a mistake and lost a good points haul because of it. Mika was good at putting those sorts of things behind him. You just kind of move on and get on with the next event.”

Enrico Zanarini: “At Monza we had a problem with the chassis of the car. If I remember well, after the Grand Prix there were tests where we tried a new chassis and that was much better. Our chassis was bent, honestly. We went into the race with not the perfect car. Eddie has always driven well at Monza, he took the Jaguar to the podium at Monza [in 2002], so it was one of his favourite circuits because of the way he drives. To have such a terrible result there was a disaster, but obviously Hakkinen went off [and lost points as well].”

Our 1999 flashback series concludes here with Part III, when the Stewart cars of Johnny Herbert and Rubens Barrichello star, Schumacher makes his comeback and the championship fight between Hakkinen and Irvine goes down to the wire…