Michael Schumacher won his first Hungarian Grand Prix in 1994 while his team-mate in Benetton Jos Verstappen secured his first podium.
In 1994, Schumacher celebrated six time in the first seven races and after two races without points in England and Germany, the German driver returned to winning ways in the tenth race of the season.
Benetton had refuelling problems in the previous race in Germany where Verstappen’s car spectacularly ignited, and FIA eventually did not decide to punish them even though they found that they had removed the filter from the system to speed up the refuelling by 12%.
Schumacher won pole position (1:18.258) with a commanding advantage of 0.566 seconds ahead of Hill in Williams and 1.947 seconds ahead of Coulthard in the second Williams. German driver led 68 out of 77 laps in the race (Hill ran the remaining nine rounds) and won for the first time in Hungary.
In addition to pole position and win, Schumacher also took the fastest lap, 0.639 seconds faster than Hill and completed a hat trick after disappointing race in Germany.
“I really want to finish in this place two weeks ago in Germany, but I have to say that the victory in this race has taken a lot of pressure from us, the first and third places are absolutely fantastic for the team,” Michael said after the first of four victories in Hungary.
“I started well, but I had too much wheelspin so Damon managed to be near me before the first corner, actually he was a little ahead, but I knew if I stayed next to him I’ll be fine for the next corner and so it turned out to be.”
“Then I was under pressure because I did not know what Williams was doing with the strategy, I stopped three times and that meant that I had to keep pushing on to keep my advantage.”
“Once I had the last stop, I could have a little break. The car was very good, but the track changed a lot since the start of the race, that was the only problem I had.”
After the seventh win in the first ten races of the season, Schumacher had 31 points more than Hill (76-45), but everything will change after the next three races in which Hill will win 30 and Schumacher 0 points after being suspended from two races in Italy and Portugal due to the FIA decision on alleged Benetton’s use of traction control.
Photo: Ford / Benetton F1 Team
