Catch 22" may cost Hill dearly

IF Damon Hill fails to win the 1996 Formula One World Championship he may well reflect that lap 22 of last Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix was the moment his title hopes evaporated.

From the moment he accelerated away from pole position on the starting grid, Hill had looked in complete control. Driving away from the pack with meticulous precision and with a clear track ahead is when he is at his absolute best. By the time he pulled in for his first pit stop at the end of lap 17, he was over 17 seconds ahead of Jean Alesi's second placed Benetton.

Yet the next few laps would again, serve to underline the nagging reservations which the Williams team "has privately harboured about his completeness as a grand prix driver. His performance when it copies to carrying through heavy traffic yet again proved his obvious Achilles heel and, almost imperceptibly, the tide of his advantage started to ebb away.

At the end of lap 20, Hill was second behind Alesi, 19.846 seconds ahead of eventual winner Jacques Villeneuve who was fourth behind Mika Hakkinen's McLaren. Hill had just turned a lap in 1 minute 24.944 seconds, Villeneuve in 1 minute 23.902 seconds.

On lap 21, Hill was 14.8 seconds, ahead of Villeneuve and coming up to lap Ricardo Rosset's Footwork which was battling for 16th place with the Tyrrell of Ukyo Katayama.

The two men were paying scant attention to their rear view mirrors as they concentrated on their own personal dispute but Hill simply could not get by. Between laps 21 and 23, Hill dropped from 14.8 seconds to 7.1 seconds ahead of Villeneuve, losing 5.8 seconds on lap 22 alone as he struggled to get past the slower cars. On lap 23, he had successfully lapped Rosset but was still lapping two seconds slower than Villeneuve as he struggled to overtake Katayama, a task which occupied whim until the end of lap 24.

With a clear track ahead of him again, the race leader managed to.

stabilise his advantage, even opening it out to 9.8 seconds by the end of lap 29. But by the time the two. Williams drivers emerged from their second pit stops, on laps 30, and 31 respectively, Villeneuve had definitely scented a possible victory. By lap 37, he was only 2.5 seconds behind Hill and on lap 39 he was 0.802 seconds adrift.

Ironically, the situation then developed into a stalemate. Villeneuve felt he could have lapped faster on a clear track but Hill was in a position to dictate the pace of the race if he didn't make a slip. It was now clear that the outcome of this potential championship decider would hang on the times both men took for their final pit stops.

At the end of lap 49, Hill was scheduled to come in. Unfortunately, he found himself following David Coulthard's McLaren, limping in with a punctured rear tyre around the last right hander before the pits and had to swoop wide round his outside before darting back across the track into the pit lane entrance.

Although he would later suggest this cost him more time, in fact Hill's "in lap" before his third and "final pit stop was completed in 1 minute 30.826 seconds. Villeneuve came in next time round in 1 minute 30.754 seconds.

The two Williams FW18s were just a couple of seconds apart on the road but the final blow for Hill came when he was held for a couple of crucial seconds after the completion of his refuelling while Coulthard pulled into the McLaren pits a few yards further on.

Thus, as Hill hurtled past the pits to complete his 50th lap, Villeneuve was accelerating hard down the pit lane to return to the race, just managing to squeeze out and into the first corner before his rival.

It was all too easy to blame Hill's failure to win the race on that slight, final delay in the pit lane yet such a conclusion presents a dramatically distorted picture of the events which led to his defeat. When Jacques Villeneuve took fourth place from Michael Schumacher's Ferrari in an audacious lunge round the outside of the final right hander before the pits as the two cars came up to complete lap 16, the real difference between the two Williams drivers was thrown into graphic relief.

Villeneuve took a massive risk because he knew he had nothing to lose. Hill had everything to lose yet, with the race victory in the palm of his hand, he still couldn't prevent it somehow slipping away.

It is now win or bust for Villeneuve in the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka where Hill would be well advised to keep out of trouble and cruise round to clinch the title with a fourth or fifth place finish. Given his recent luck, racing for another win might be too risky for him to contemplate.