1997, Villeneuve seems unbeatable

Jacques Villeneuve, winner of the 1997 Brazilian Grand Prix at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace near São Paolo, enjoys the podium celebrations with Gerhard Berger who finished second for the Benetton team (picture-above). Prost driver Olivier Panis was a fine third.

Jacques Villeneuve, clearly the man to beat in this 1997 season, took his third consecutive and his career fifth, pole position, over half a second faster than Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) in second and won the race convincingly. His new Williams team mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, a very fast driver indeed, seemed to struggle to adapt to his Williams-Renault, was only eighth and could not do better than ninth in the race.

Damon Hill, the reigning World Champion, who inexplicably had not been retained by Williams and was now driving for Arrows, was again affected by reliability issues (picture-below). He was running in fourth place at one point, a great performance in an Arrows, but had slipped down the field, before retiring in the pits with an engine problem.