Villeneuve takes title race to the wire with brilliant win

WHAT started out looking like a dominant title-clinching victory run for Damon Hill ended with a brilliant success for his team-mate Jacques Villeneuve, whose win here in yesterday's Portuguese Grand Prix kept alive his slender championship hopes through to the final race in Japan on October 13th.

At one point Hill was 19 seconds ahead of his fellow Williams driver but a combination of traffic, a lacklustre performance by the Englishman in the second stint between pit stops and Villeneuve's sheer flair brought the French Canadian right up on to his tail with 30 laps to run.

"I was enjoying my time out there at the front," said Hill, "but I always knew that Jacques would be able to get through (to second place) ahead of Alesi. He closed up on me pretty quickly, so I thought `OK, let's see what he can do', and I put the hammer down a bit and pulled away.

"I thought I would have a sufficient advantage to stay ahead of him through the last pit stop, but I lost a bit of time behind a McLaren coming round the last corner and was very surprised to see him coming out of the pits ahead of me. I was pretty shocked. He was flying and there was no way I could stay with him at the end."

Villeneuve will now have to win the Japanese GP with Hill failing to score in order to grab the championship by a single point. The former Indy 500 winner, while accepting his is an outside chance will certainly be pressing hard to the very last lap of the final race.

"My car today was very, very strong and I was able to race it very hard," said Villeneuve. "I knew that once I got ahead, if I didn't make a mistake or get involved in traffic at the wrong spot, we would finish in front."

After a dogged climb through the field, Villeneuve vaulted ahead of Hill coming out from his final refuelling stop with 20 of the race's 70 laps to go, after which Hill dropped away with minor clutch problems to finish 19.96 seconds adrift.

Hill got away brilliantly from pole position, cutting off a challenge from Jean Alesi's fast-starting Benetton as the pack sprinted for the first right-hander. By contrast, Villeneuve got away relatively slowly and completed the opening lap behind Hill, Alesi and Michael Schumacher's Ferrari.

It simply did not look as though Hill could lose. After a dozen laps he was some 10 seconds ahead and Villeneuve was still bogged down in fourth place. But the Canadian knew he had to throw all caution to the wind and he pounced when Schumacher was momentarily baulked as they lapped Giovanni Lavaggi's Minardi.

Coming through the 150 m.p.h. right-hander on to the start-finish straight, Villeneuve took his Williams round the outside of Schumacher in what was undoubtedly one of the most breathtaking passing manoeuvres seen all season.

As he drew level with the Ferrari, the two cars still had Lavaggi's Minardi ahead, but Villeneuve successfully edged ahead and then nipped across the Ferrari's bows on the start-finish straight before tucking inside the slow Italian's car going into the next right-hander.

"It was fun overtaking on the outside of the last turn," said Villeneuve. "I told the team before the race that I thought we could do it. They said they would come and pick me out of the guard rail if I tried. But I had nothing to lose. Either I beat Damon or I lost the championship right there anyway, 59 it was worth it to take the big risk."

For Hill, the countdown to the final race of the year promises three weeks of high tension. For Villeneuve, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, it is likely to be suffused with optimism.