| 1997 Spanish Grand Prix | |||||
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Race 6 of 17 in the1997 Formula One World Championship
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| Race details | |||||
| Date | 25 May 1997 | ||||
| Official name | XXXIX Gran Premio Marlboro de España | ||||
| Location | Circuit de Catalunya,Montmeló,Catalonia,Spain[1] | ||||
| Course | Permanent racing facility | ||||
| Course length | 4.728 km (2.938 miles) | ||||
| Distance | 64 laps, 302.469 km (187.946 miles) | ||||
| Scheduled distance | 65 laps, 307.196 km (190.883 miles) | ||||
| Weather | Clear | ||||
| Attendance | 64,000 | ||||
| Pole position | |||||
| Driver | Williams-Renault | ||||
| Time | 1:16.525 | ||||
| Fastest lap | |||||
| Driver |  Giancarlo Fisichella | Jordan-Peugeot | |||
| Time | 1:22.242 on lap 20 | ||||
| Podium | |||||
| First | Williams-Renault | ||||
| Second | Prost-Mugen-Honda | ||||
| Third | Benetton-Renault | ||||
Lap leaders | |||||
The1997 Spanish Grand Prix (formally theXXXIX Gran Premio Marlboro de España) was aFormula One motor race held on 25 May 1997 at theCircuit de Catalunya inMontmeló, Spain. It was the sixth race of the1997 Formula One World Championship.
The 64-lap race was won frompole position by CanadianJacques Villeneuve, driving aWilliams-Renault. FrenchmanOlivier Panis finished second in aProst-Mugen-Honda, six seconds behind Villeneuve, having only started 12th.[2] Another Frenchman,Jean Alesi, finished third in aBenetton-Renault.
The win, Villeneuve's third of the season, put him back into the lead of the Drivers' Championship by three points from GermanMichael Schumacher, who finished fourth in hisFerrari.
Michael Schumacher, having started 7th, ended the first lap in 2nd position, and was challengingVilleneuve in theWilliams for the lead. However, Schumacher, in the spareFerrari, was unable to stay with the leader and was starting to slow the cars behind him. By lap 13, the gap between him and Villeneuve was approximately 20 seconds, and a train of cars consisting toDavid Coulthard,Jean Alesi,Mika Häkkinen,Heinz-Harald Frentzen, andJohnny Herbert was behind him. His lap times were approximately 1:26 while Villeneuve's was 1:22.
In this high tyre wearing race, especially for theGoodyear tyres,[3] the firstpit stops started at approximately lap 14, with the final one being on lap 25, which wasOlivier Panis, in his finely balancedProst withBridgestone tyres. Soon after, beginning from lap 29, three stop runners were starting to pit for the 2nd time. This enabled Panis to gain positions, and by lap 34, he was 4th, and closing on Alesi and Coulthard who were 2nd and 3rd respectively. Soon after, Panis overtook Coulthard, who was on inferior Goodyear tyres, in a fine move on the approach to turn 1. Panis managed to jump to 2nd place ahead of Alesi in the pits.
Panis was gaining on the leader, Villeneuve, by approximately 1.5 seconds per lap. By the end of lap 49, the gap was 10.8 seconds, from 13 seconds at the end of lap 47. However, during lap 50, Panis was held up by traffic, firstlyRalf Schumacher'sJordan and then the Ferrari ofEddie Irvine. With marshals not waving theblue flags,[3] Irvine failed to let Panis through, and thus allowing Jean Alesi and Michael Schumacher to catch him up. When Irvine finally yielded on lap 57, the gap between Panis and Villeneuve was back up to 16.1 seconds. Irvine later received astop-go penalty for his actions. After Panis cleared the traffic, he was lapping 1.5 to 2 seconds faster than the leader and managed to close the gap to less than 6 seconds by the end of the race, but it was too late and Villeneuve took his 3rd victory of the season. This was Panis's final podium finish in Formula One.
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