When you sack a driver who’s heading for a Formula 1 world championship victory to make way for someone who’s never won a grand prix or proved themselves in a top team yet, upsetting your design genius along the way, that new signing needs to be pretty special.
But Heinz-Harald Frentzen won just one race for Williams after replacing reigning champion Damon Hill for the 1997 F1 season.
Bring Back V10s relives that victory – in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola – while trying to unravel the question of why Frentzen proved so unsuccessful at Williams and why the team was so confident about signing him in the first place.
Host Glenn Freeman is joined by mid-1990s Hill fan Edd Straw and mid-1990s Frentzen fan Matt Beer to delve into that and everything else that was happening around F1 at the time.
That included the first tests of the new grooved tyres for 1998 – with an enraged Jacques Villeneuve leading the opposition – and Adrian Newey’s imminent game-changing move from Williams to McLaren.
And while it’s a Frentzen-themed episode, Hill makes a significant appearance as we dig into one of the worst moments of his time at Arrows: a fairly dismal collision with Shinji Nakano that earned the reigning champion a suspended ban.
ASK US ANYTHING! (about 1989-2005 F1) – Submit your questions for our end-of-series episode using the hashtag #BringBackV10s on Twitter, or you can email bringbackv10s@the-race.com.
Bring Back V10s is available through all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
