The 1994 Formula 1 season was controversial, not least for Benetton whose car was constantly under scrutiny because of an unfair advantage.
The Benetton BT194 was competitive at the hands of Michael Schumacher, having won six of the first seven races of the season, although it was not without controversy.
Schumacher had been disqualified at Silverstone for ignoring a stop/go penalty from the stewards, while the Belgian GP was the last time a driver was disqualified for excessive wear on the skid blocks before George Russell fell foul of the same incident last year.
That year, Schumacher had three teammates including Jos Verstappen, JJ Lehto and Johnny Herbert.
It was the third team of the season for Herbert after unsuccessful campaigns with Lotus and Ligier, and he was brought in for the underperforming Verstappen for the final two rounds of the season in Japan and Australia.
Speaking in his book, Lights Out, Full Throttle, the British driver recalls the team doing something that ‘bamboozled’ the rest of the field that year.
Benetton race strategy ‘bamboozled’ rest of the F1 field
Strategy in F1 has played a key role in how teams earn a result on track. Ferrari’s blunders in 2022 show just how crucial things can be, after they made mistakes in Hungary and Monaco with Charles Leclerc.
Although computers were not as powerful as they are now in the 1990s, F1 teams were starting to use them to calculate their strategies. Benetton was one of the first teams to invest in the technology, with Herbert realising how much further ahead of the competition they were when he joined them.
“In 1994 things started to change and by the middle of the season, the geniuses at Benetton had turned race strategy into an art form. The rest of us were bamboozled. ‘You mean, you don’t just fill up to halfway and then fill it to go to the end?” said Herbert.
“As the penny began to drop we started to adapt, but it was still basic compared to what Benetton were doing. They were giving themselves the option to respond to whatever the competition was doing. I remember Patrick getting a sheet of graph paper and a ruler out one day and saying ‘Ok, this what I think we should do.’ He was about to work out our race strategy, something Benetton had probably been doing on a computer for months.”
The 1994 Benetton was marred by cheating accusations
Schumacher won his first title with Benetton in 1994 although it was not without several allegations of cheating from fellow competitors.
Much of this was characterised by the infamous images of Verstappen’s car being engulfed in a fireball at the German GP, as petrol spat out of the refuelling rig and covered the hot car.
It later transpired that the team had inserted a ‘foreign body’ into the rig and that prevented the valve from closing properly. Benetton had attempted to make their pit stops faster, but it ended in disaster.
The team was also accused of using launch control in their cars, which was outlawed by the FIA, due to the impressive starts made by Schumacher off the line. An investigation later revealed the existence of ‘Option 13’ in the engine management system, although the team admitted that it could not be activated by the driver.
The BT194 would go down in F1 folklore as one of the most controversial cars, after Schumacher won the title after colliding with Hill in Adelaide, effectively ending his main rival race and with it securing the first of his seven titles.
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