Jacques Villeneuve claims the title after infamous collision with Michael Schumacher – 1997 European Grand Prix

To mark F1’s 75th anniversary celebrations, F1.com is counting down the sport’s 25 greatest races with a new feature every week. While you may not agree with the order, we hope you enjoy the stories of these epic races that have helped make this sport what it is today. You can read the introduction to the series and see the list of races here.

At No. 4, Jacques Villeneuve shares his memories of the 1997 European Grand Prix weekend – where the Williams driver beat Ferrari rival Michael Schumacher to the title after a bizarre Qualifying session and controversial banging of wheels on race day – with Mike Seymour…

It all started with Michael at Estoril in 1996, when I overtook him around the outside of the last corner. That’s when the 1997 season really began!

It was a strange year in that we hardly ever fought wheel-to-wheel. We weren’t even on the podium together at any race, which is crazy. The battle was happening outside of the car, through the media – not really on the track.

It was either win or nothing for both of us, rarely scoring points that weren’t for a win. A lot happened with incidents and mechanical failures, and it kept bouncing between who was leading the championship and making the most progress.

Heading to Jerez, I wasn’t nervous at all. I was very calm, in my own bubble, like nothing else existed. It’s probably the Saturday night that I slept the best before a race. I had a mission, and I knew I was coming out of that weekend as the champion. I just knew.

A lot of things could go wrong, obviously, because we were a point behind in the championship, so it would just take an accident, a DNF, and that would be it – Michael would be champion. But somehow, the confidence was there for me.

I was always better when there was a lot of pressure, when it was money time. It was the same when we won the Indianapolis 500. We went two laps down, we had to fight back, and we won. It’s getting into that same mindset.

I’d also just been disqualified at Suzuka. I had a nine-point lead going to Japan, and a win was worth 10 points back then. Getting disqualified before the race helped me get in that mindset. It made me feel like the little dog that’s cornered, and that really had a positive effect.

The energy when we arrived at Jerez was electric. You could feel it in the paddock through the whole weekend. But it was a tough track for us, a little big like Magny-Cours. It’s an ‘oversteery’ track, and I like oversteer, so if you have an oversteery track and you drive an oversteery car, at some point it just becomes too much. It was very difficult to find a good set-up.

With the level of intensity in Qualifying, the first lap I did was super good. I didn’t overdrive the car, it came good, and I thought, ‘That’ll be hard to repeat’. But normally, everybody keeps going faster and faster and faster in Qualifying, and that didn’t happen.

My first run turned out to be my quickest. I just couldn’t beat it. Then Schumacher and my team mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, posted lap times to the same thousandth of a second! Having done my lap first is what gave me pole. Everything happened the wrong way, but it paid off.

On Saturday night, we spent hours discussing a million strategies – with my team mate, with the rest of the team – and guess what? None of them actually panned out. We started overthinking.

At Turn 1, the whole thing was a mess because of that. Michael moved into the lead, then I saw Frentzen was close, so I braked early and let him by. After that first lap I thought, ‘Okay, let’s screw all the strategies and just go for it’, and that’s when it started working again.

I believed I could get Michael. Going into that race, there had been a lot of discussions about his antics in previous years. It was very mediatised, and everybody was talking about it. Even the FIA took a stance and said that if something nasty happens, a penalty will be used, such as disqualification.

All of this was in Michael’s and Ferrari’s heads before the race weekend, day after day, and when it’s going on for a week, it starts to have an effect. You don’t drive the same way. So, the pressure started there.

I knew also that, in general, we were better off with tyre wear. I knew I could push hard, push Michael, and hopefully push him either into a mistake or into overusing his tyres, creating a situation that would give me that one moment, a few seconds of an edge.

That’s ultimately what happened.

Frentzen was pushing early on, not really caring about his tyres. Maybe it pushed Michael a bit too much. Then Frentzen slowed down, I got back into being the hunter, and I just kept hunting Michael down.

We were very similar on pace. He was quicker coming out of the slow-speed corners, while I was better in the high-speed corners and under braking. It was balancing out, and it was just a question of judging where I could make a move, if I could make a move.

There’s no point attacking at every corner. Sometimes you have to leave a little gap, focus, and decide when to pounce. You really need to figure it out, but always staying close enough in the mirrors to make sure the driver in front of you is never resting. That’s the key.

I made both of my pit stops a lap later than Michael. Shortly after my second stop, I took Turn 1, 2, 3 and 4 more on the edge than any other lap – I even had two wheels a little bit over the sand. But I could see that I was a metre-and-a-half closer to Michael than I had been before, and I knew it was now or never. I had to go for it.

I wanted to wait until Michael wasn’t looking in his mirrors anymore to pop out. I was still far enough behind that to him it would look like I was at the same distance as every other lap, and I never made an overtake on those laps.

Once we hit the brakes into Dry Sac, I knew he would focus on the corner and wouldn’t look in his mirrors anymore. That’s when I pulled out, and he realised too late. I was amazed he did not manage to take me out, because it was a big hit. I didn’t know where I’d been hit… I thought the rear suspension, but it was the battery stand.

I still tried to go fast after that, but instead of braking at 100 metres out, I would brake at 105 metres, gradually getting on the brake, gradually getting on the throttle, avoiding the kerbs, and never give a jolt on the steering wheel, just in case the car was damaged.

Sometimes you’re on the edge of breaking down, and if you’re smooth and massage the car a little bit, you’ll reach the end. That was my only focus. I wasn’t paying attention to anything else, or to my opponents, because I didn’t need to win. I just needed to get one point.

Thank God I finished the race, because the battery rack had been damaged and was hanging only on the electrical cables. It should not have held on.

The team didn’t even tell me that the McLaren boys, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, were getting closer. There was no communication. I think everybody had stopped breathing!

I now wish I’d fought harder and not thought about the championship, because I didn’t realise it would have been my last win in F1, or my last potential win! At that moment, though, I really didn’t care about finishing the race in third.

We had an amazing party afterwards. It was in the good old fashion way that predated social media. Someone took the key at the hotel and made an open bar. I was serving drinks for around 20 people – friends, this and that.

Anyway, Jerez was the culmination of a crazy 1997 season for us all – it was amazing that it all came down to the final race.

It was super cool to sit on Hakkinen and Coulthard’s shoulders on the podium, and I’ll also always remember being handed a phone because the Prime Minister of Canada had called me! It’s moments like these that you just can’t imagine.

Jacques Villeneuve was speaking to F1.com’s Mike Seymour