Jordan's Greatest Day: Hill, Rain and the Schumacher Confrontation

The Belgian Grand Prix of 1998 began in chaos and ended in history. A massive multi-car accident on the opening lap, caused by the standing water on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit and triggered partly by David Coulthard's McLaren, eliminated half the field before a lap was complete. The safety car appeared. The survivors picked their way through the wreckage and waited for the road to clear.

Michael Schumacher, who had somehow navigated the carnage of the opening lap, came through to lead as conditions improved. He was lapping the back markers — working through the slower cars as a dominant car in wet conditions is able to do — when he encountered David Coulthard's McLaren. Coulthard, who had slowed to allow Schumacher to unlap himself, apparently reduced his speed more dramatically than Schumacher expected. The Ferrari ran into the back of the McLaren. Schumacher's car was damaged. His race was over.

The incident — whatever its precise mechanics — produced a confrontation that became one of Formula 1's most-watched moments. Schumacher climbed from his car, went to the McLaren garage, and confronted Coulthard in terms that left no room for ambiguity. The German was not consoled. The television cameras caught all of it.

With Schumacher gone and the McLarens affected, the race fell to Jordan. Damon Hill, the 1996 World Champion who had endured a wretched 1997 season with Arrows and arrived at Jordan looking for revival, led from the front with the composure of a man who had not forgotten how to win. Behind him, his Jordan teammate Ralf Schumacher — Michael's younger brother — held second. Jordan achieved their first ever one-two finish. Hill, in the team's garage and on the podium, was barely able to contain himself.

Damon Hill won the Belgian Grand Prix for Jordan, his first victory since the 1996 Japanese Grand Prix and the final Formula 1 win of his career. Ralf Schumacher finished second — Jordan's first one-two in Formula 1. Hill's victory was Jordan's first ever grand prix win and one of the most celebrated in the sport's history given the circumstances.

Michael Schumacher was classified out of the points after the Coulthard collision. The McLarens, despite the controversy, also failed to capitalise fully. The result gave Mika Häkkinen a strong position in the championship, which he would go on to win.

Mika Häkkinen and Michael Schumacher were contesting the 1998 championship in the closest fight the sport had seen since the Prost-Senna era. Häkkinen's McLaren-Mercedes had begun the season faster, but Ferrari had closed the gap through the second half of the year. Schumacher's retirement at Spa, combined with Häkkinen's failure to score well, left the championship delicately balanced for the final rounds.

Häkkinen won the 1998 championship — his first of two consecutive titles. For Hill, the Spa victory was a coda to a career defined by extraordinary peaks and valleys: World Champion in 1996, dropped by Williams, struggling through 1997, and then this, in the rain at Spa, at the wheel of a car nobody had expected to win. It was a fitting final win for a driver who had given the sport more than it sometimes deserved from him.

August 1998 carried the weight of several significant events. On August 15, just two weeks before the race, the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland killed 29 people — the deadliest single incident of the Troubles and a particularly dark moment given that the Good Friday Agreement had been signed just four months earlier. The peace that had seemed to be taking hold was suddenly and horribly threatened.

In the United States, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal dominated news coverage as the president prepared for his grand jury testimony. In Russia, the rouble crisis was unfolding, with the economy in free fall. The world in late August 1998 had a particular unsettled quality. Formula 1's drama at Spa — the rain, the crashes, the confrontation, the unexpected winner — felt, in the way sports occasionally do, like a reflection of the volatility surrounding it.

Heavy rain from before the start, with standing water on multiple sections of the circuit including through Eau Rouge and along the Kemmel Straight. The conditions caused the opening-lap accident and set the tone for a race that was decided as much by survival as by pace. Spa-Francorchamps, set in the forested hills of the Ardennes, is notorious for variable and extreme weather — this particular Sunday delivered conditions that tested every car and driver severely.