Damon Hill won the Australian Grand Prix by two complete laps over the opposition. That has only been achieved once before in the history of the Formula 1 World Championship, at the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix when Jackie Stewart took his Matra to a two lap victory over Bruce McLaren at MontjuïcPark in Barcelona. Damon had answered his critics in the best possible way.

The Adelaide weekend, which boasted the biggest race day crowd in F1 history - 210,000 people - was overshadowed by the accident which befell Mika Häkkinen on Friday afternoon at Brewery Bend when his McLaren suffered a rear left puncture (caused by wreckage) and crashed heavily. Mika suffered head injuries and was rushed to hospital.

Qualifying resulted in Hill and Coulthard sharing the front row of the grid with Schumacher third. The Ferraris were fourth and fifth, Berger ahead of Alési, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen sixth.

At the start Coulthard took the lead from Hill while Schumacher's hopes of challenging the Williams pair went out of the window, his Benetton being engulfed by the two Ferraris. It took him four laps to pass Alési and then Berger and his tyres were shot by the time he had and he could not challenge Coulthard and Hill.

At the first pit stops Coulthard came into the tight pitlane entry too fast and ran into the pitwall. His race was over.

Schumacher and Alési collided after their pit stops and both were forced to retire. This gave Hill a half minute advantage over Herbert - who had not pitted - and so when the Benetton finally did pit he had nearly a minute's advantage over Berger. The Ferrari then blew up. Frentzen moved into second - holding off Herbert - until the Sauber's gearbox graunched horribly and died.

Herbert ran second for a while with Eddie Irvine third. The Jordan-Peugeot then lost all pneumatic pressure and Eddie pulled out. A few laps later Herbert suffered a driveshaft failure.

This left Olivier Panis in second place in the Ligier with Gianni Morbidelli third for Arrows. In the closing laps Panis's Mugen Honda engine was pumping out oil and he was lapped for a second time by Hill. In third place Morbidelli held off Blundell's McLaren and there was much celebrating down at the Arrows pit.

Fourth place belonged to Blundell - which was hardly a very inspiring result for McLaren after the team's remarkable second place finish at Suzuka just a fortnight before. Mika Salo held on to fifth with Pedro Lamy right behind him, the Portuguese driver giving Minardi its first point of the year.