Moral Championship Standings

[Doc Austin]

Yep. Hill made a bad move, but it was just a bad move. He did not try to punt Schumacher out of the lead, and he ruined his own race as well. You can't compare that to wrecking someone on purpose when the championship is on the line. This is F1, not nascar.

I don't know how people can view an accident video over and over and still come to different conclusions as to what happened, but this is how it is. I don't believe anyone ever claimed that Hill took aim on Schumacher, but many people believe the reversed happened at Adelaide, and this was underlined by what happened later at Jerez in 97.

"Deliberate but instinctual."
I remember that Schumacher fans were militant in his defense after Jerez, and were unashamed even after he admitted he did it on purpose. It became even more comical when some of these fans would not change their stance even after Schumacher admitted turning into Villeneuve was "deliberate, but instinctual." There are still Schumacher fans who will argue Schumacher did nothing wrong at Jerez, or that Villeneuve was making a suicide pass. The truth is, Schumacher admitted it was deliberate, and he was excluded from the 97 championship as a result, not that he cared about a second place finish or anything.

Those of us who viewed Adelaide without a sense of Schumacher wonderment knew the collision was coming the moment Villeneuve swung out to pass, but this was because of what happened the last time Schumacher was involved in a championship moment.

See, After Jerez, it is not unfair to view Adelaide 94 as the beginning of a pattern.

If you are going to throw any championship out, I think it has to be 94. Regardless of what led up to it, the championship was determined by the moment when the guy who had the most to gain by crashing his opponent crashed his opponent. You can say it was an "incident," but later Jerez suggests these "incidents" constitute a pattern.

At Hocklenheim, there was the Benetton fuel filter cheating scandal, which was proven, and yet the FIA did nothing. Verstappen's Benetton burst into flames and it was a very ugly incident we are lucky did not get out of control. Funny that the FIA did hardly anything to them, when they were caught so blatantly cheating. Remembering the draconian penalty Tyrell got for cheating on their refuelling system, the slap on the wrist Benetton got was shamefully lenient. If Tyrell was precedent, Benetton should have been tossed out of the championship on the spot.

The FIA did nothing to help themselves considering that they essentially ignored Benetton cheating on the refueling system, then DQing Schumacher for a plank violation after it was damaged driving over a curb. Essentially they let a deliberate cheat (Hockenhiem and maybe every race before that) slide, and then they nail Schumacher and toss his Spa win out on a technicality when they could have very easily said it was accident damage and let a good win stand.

On top of the dirty driving, there were many other incidents that season which make 1994 a truly rotten season. There were so many stories about the Benetton traction control system, and the Benetton launch control system. It's too lengthy to go into all of it, but there was still plenty of talk and suspicion about it. Maybe it was just that, but even Senna said there was something funny about that car.

Some minds believe the FIA came down so hard on Benetton because they knew the car was illegal but could not prove it. Why else would they create such a stink over Schumacher being out of position on the formation lap, DQ him from the race and then built that into another two race suspension? That may have been the biggest farce of the year.

About the only person who drove a clean season and stayed out of all the scandals was Hill, but in the end even he got caught up in it. There was so much underhanded stuff going on from all directions that '94 is truly a year that should be completely stricken from the record books.


IMHO, but of course.