NOVEMBER 13, 1995
Damon's record win
DAMON HILL'S victory for Williams at Adelaide was remarkable in that his margin of victory over Olivier Panis was two complete laps of the 2.349-mile circuit - margin of victory of nearly five miles!
It is only the second time in the history of the Formula 1 World Championship that a driver has finished two laps clear of all his rivals: the first occasion was in May 1969 on the fast, flowing Montjuich Park track in Barcelona, Spain, where JackieÊStewart took his Matra-Ford MS80 to a two-lap victory over Bruce McLaren.
Damon's victory was his 13th Grand Prix win - and he is now only one victory behind his father Graham Hill, who won 14 GPs in the 1960s. The win was the Hill Family's second Australian Grand Prix triumph, Graham having won the race at Lakeside in Queensland, during the Tasman Championship in 1966, at the wheel of a BRM P261.
Hill's victory was his fourth of the year, but World Champion Michael Schumacher collected a total of nine victories. JohnnyÊHerbert won two races, and David Coulthard and Jean Alesi scored one win each. In contrast, the Williams drivers each scored six pole positions with Schumacher taking four poles and Gerhard Berger just one for Ferrari.
In the Constructors' Championship Olivier Panis's second place for Ligier in Adelaide leap-frogged the team ahead of Jordan and Sauber. The final scores were Benetton-Renault (137 pts), Williams-Renault (112pts), Ferrari (73pts) and McLaren (30pts). Ligier (24) beat Jordan-Peugeot (21) and Sauber-Ford (18) thanks to remarkable good fortune in the closing laps of the Adelaide race when Olivier Panis's Mugen Honda V10 engine failed with just a couple of laps to run in the race.
"There was no question of stopping if I didn't have to," said Panis later. "Somehow it held together."
The team was so delighted to finish second in the race and fifth in the Constructors' title that team manager Tony Dowe rang team boss Tom Walkinshaw in England, waking up his boss at two o'clock in the morning British time.