The Benetton team scored a 1-2 finish in Barcelona and in doing so Schumacher moved to the top of the Drivers' Championship and the team overtook Williams in the Constructors' battle. It was Benetton's second 1-2 in the team's history, the only other such triumph being at Suzuka in 1990. Michael Schumacher and the Benetton engineers decided to try a new strategy - having failed to beat Williams using the 1994 trick of making one more pit stop than the Didcot team. Instead Schumacher made one stop less...

Johnny Herbert's second place - his first F1 podium finish - was rather fortunate and came only after Damon Hill ran into trouble on the very last lap of the race and dropped from second to fourth due to a gearbox hydraulic problem.

On Friday Ferrari had had a 1-2 on the grid but the Benetton engineers worked hard during the night and on Saturday Schumacher blasted away the opposition with a lap which was six-tenths faster than everyone else. The Ferraris remained second and third while Coulthard and Hill were a disappointing fourth and fifth. Coulthard may have beaten Hill but he reckoned he might have done a lot better but for tonsilitis.

If Williams was disappointed, McLaren was in the depths with Häkkinen and Mansell ninth and 10th on the grid, behind the two Jordans.

In the finest traditions of Spanish wiring the green light never came on to signal the start and those who were waiting for it were left behind. This had a particularly detrimental effect on both Coulthard and Mansell who went from fourth to seventh and 10th to 14th respectively.

Schumacher led Alési and Hill with Berger fourth, while Coulthard wasted vital laps passing Häkkinen and Irvine to get back to his grid position. Mansell, in the meantime, had a spin and then stopped in the pits, declaring his McLaren to be "virtually impossible to drive." That was the last F1 saw of former World Champion Nigel Mansell. McLaren boss Ron Dennis does not like criticism, Nigel would be replaced by Blundell from Monaco onwards.

Schumacher completed a blistering series of laps in the early part of the race but gradually Alési and Hill - who were locked in combat giving chase - began to close the gap. The Williams boys pitted early on - they were going for three pit stops - and so Schumacher and Alési stayed ahead and indeed remained ahead after their first stops. Alési might well have challenged for the lead late in the race but his engine blew up and so Schumacher was left with a big lead over the two Williams-Renaults. Towards the end of the race Coulthard was sidelined by a gearbox problem and then, on the last lap, Hill suffered a gearbox hydraulic system failure and dropped behind Herbert - who would score his first F1 podium - and Berger - who had also chosen the three-stop strategy.

Irvine was fifth - the first points for the Jordan-Peugeot relationship (well-timed as Peugeot boss Jacques Calvet was there to watch) - but there was disappointment when Rubens Barrichello suffered a throttle problem on the last lap and lost sixth place to the Ligier of Olivier Panis.