Anyone bored ?under lock down? Commentary by the one and only Murray Walker If only F1 was the same nowadays....
It wasn't a very good day for Ferrari. Schumacher throwing it away during the first lap, and Irvine completely messing up the strategy.
It may not be a very good circuit for racing, but if you have to win only ONE GP in your career, it may as well be the Monaco GP, simply for the prestige. Olivier Panis joins Jarno Trulli and Jean Pierre Beltoise, a driver who won nothing else. Maurice Trintignant is another one who won nowhere else, but he won the Monaco GP TWICE !!
'96 was a decent race with some action and surprises. That F310 was a hilarious POS. The ICE cars always sound extra special off the buildings.
Great race throughout unlike most Monaco GP’s. Calling a spoiler alert for this one, This is anybody’s race. Just wanted to hear Bob Varsha calling the race once again, giving us all the latest news at the time. Superlative commentating (outside of murdering ‘umbrella’)! Damn Williams’ and Benettons were so bloody quick, with the Fezzas, Macs and Jordans covering the top 10 in quali. All the boys were there . Battles throughout the field, a slippery track and some future greats in the wrong car.
Monaco 1996 was the only GP I ever watched live while visiting California, I was staying with some friends and we had to wake up at 4AM or something...not jealous of those in that time zone for European GP's...but that race was entertaining and historic, Olivier remains the last Frenchman to win a GP until now. He was reunited with the car in Monaco a couple of years ago. Re Schumi screwing up into the wall he used to get it wrong every second year in Monaco, one year his suspension failed and he said it just broke but Mika Salo called him out: he saw him hit the wall with that wheel. Oh and let's not talk about qualifying in 2006 or hitting JPM on the warm up lap another year...
I watched it too. That race was a couple of years after I moved to the States and didn't have a way to watch F1 so I'd never seen it. Great for Panis, but I was gutted for Hill, a very underrated driver who should be a two times WDC. That race was his, he drove perfectly beating Shui off the line and it would have been so good to see him win one at Monaco after his dads utter domination of the place three decades earlier.
Speaking of Panis while Monaco 1996 was his best day another day in 2008 was perhaps the worst: he was driving a car made in...Maranello on the autoroute between Geneva and Chamonix and got caught...at 212kph! https://www.auto123.com/fr/actualites/f1-olivier-panis-arrete-pour-exces-de-vitesse-au-volant-dune-ferrari/4471/ In the end he got 4 months suspended licence and the car was confiscated for 6 months. He is lucky nowadays it would be jail time plus the car confiscated and sold at government seized assets auction.