1995 Season

Driver changes

David Coulthard is confirmed as a full-time Williams driver for 1995. After Ayrton Senna’s death left the seat vacant in 1994, Williams alternated Coulthard and Nigel Mansell in the car; Mansell left Williams at the start of January and Coulthard was offered the drive outright.

Mansell joins McLaren alongside Mika Häkkinen. He cannot fit in the MP4/10 chassis, however — a wider monocoque is being built to accommodate him. He will miss the first two races while that work is completed, with test driver Mark Blundell deputizing.

Johnny Herbert leaves Ligier to join Benetton alongside Michael Schumacher. At Ligier, Olivier Panis takes the full-time seat, with Martin Brundle and Aguri Suzuki sharing the second car for alternate races. Blundell has moved from Tyrrell to McLaren; his Tyrrell seat goes to Mika Salo, after a dispute between Salo and the Pacific team — which claimed his services under the Lotus name it acquired — was resolved in Salo’s favour by the FIA Contract Recognition Board.

Jos Verstappen joins Simtek from Benetton, replacing Hideki Noda, whose personal funding collapsed in the wake of the Great Hanshin earthquake. Noda is set to share the second Simtek seat with Domenico Schiattarella.

New team Forti fields veteran Roberto Moreno alongside rookie Pedro Diniz, whose family controls one of Brazil’s largest food distribution companies. Christian Fittipaldi has been replaced by Taki Inoue at Footwork. Pacific replaces Paul Belmondo with Andrea Montermini. Minardi replaces Michele Alboreto with Luca Badoer.

Team changes

Team Lotus has left Formula One after 36 years and six Drivers’ Championships, ceasing operations in January 1995. Its assets were purchased by David Hunt, brother of 1976 champion James Hunt, who is licensing the Lotus name to the Pacific team — now entering as Pacific Team Lotus.

The Larrousse team has also folded. With French government funding not forthcoming and no 1995 chassis built, the team has no prospect of racing.

Formula 3000 outfit Forti has stepped up to Formula One. Their Forti FG01 is the last Formula One car to be built with a manual gearbox.

Ligier is now run by Tom Walkinshaw, who had been Benetton’s Engineering Director in 1994 before departing as part of that team’s post-German Grand Prix sanctions. The Ligier JS41 was designed by engineers who came from Benetton, and is aerodynamically very close to the Benetton B195. Walkinshaw acknowledges the resemblance: “Aerodynamically, it’s as close as we can make it to being the same. I don’t know how you would end up with anything else if you take a core of engineers who have been working on the Benetton.”

A sweeping engine reshuffle has reshaped much of the midfield. Benetton ends its seven-year partnership with Ford and switches to Renault RS7 engines — the same units used by Williams. Sauber drops Mercedes for Ford; McLaren takes the Mercedes supply in return, ending its one-season Peugeot deal. Jordan inherits Peugeot from McLaren, dropping Hart; Hart moves to Footwork. Pacific switches from Ilmor to customer Ford EDC units. Minardi had been promised Mugen-Honda engines, but Ligier boss Flavio Briatore persuaded the Japanese supplier to divert the supply to Ligier instead. Minardi, whose M195 was designed around a Mugen-Honda V10 with parts already being made, was forced to redesign around a Ford engine at the last minute. Team owner Giancarlo Minardi has announced legal action against the supplier.

With Larrousse and Lotus gone, the grid is reduced to 13 teams and 26 cars — the same number as the maximum permitted to start a race. Every entered driver is guaranteed a grid slot; there is no pre-qualifying.

Calendar

Seventeen races run from 26 March in Brazil to 12 November in Australia. The Argentine Grand Prix returns to the calendar after a 14-year absence, held at the Autódromo Oscar Alfredo Gálvez. The Spanish Grand Prix and Monaco Grand Prix have swapped positions, so Monaco now follows Spain. The European Grand Prix moves from the Circuito Permanente de Jerez to the Nürburgring — the first Formula One race there since 1985. The Pacific Grand Prix has been pushed back to October after the Great Hanshin earthquake damaged the infrastructure around the TI Circuit.

Regulation changes

Engine capacity is cut from 3.5 to 3.0 litres, combined with tightly specified fuel chemistry, reducing power output by approximately 100 bhp.

Aerodynamics are substantially tightened. Ride height is raised by 50 mm, and a raised stepped section is added beneath each sidepod. The rear wing maximum height is reduced from 95 cm to 80 cm; the front wing minimum height rises from 40 mm to 50 mm; the rear diffuser width is cut from 100 cm to 30 cm; and exclusion zones around the wheels are extended. The combined effect is expected to reduce downforce by 30–40%.

Safety rules introduced at the 1994 German Grand Prix — including the mandatory 10 mm wooden skid block, permitted to wear by no more than 1 mm — are formalised for 1995. New requirements include side impact structures, stronger frontal crash tests (12 m/s, up from 11 m/s), larger cockpit openings, a higher survival cell, and a minimum combined car-and-driver weight of 595 kg. All drivers are weighed before the first session to establish a reference weight.

Pre-season testing

The Footwork FA16 and Simtek S951 chassis arrived at the opening event having barely completed any testing. At the front of the field, Schumacher and Hill are the expected championship protagonists; Schumacher says he anticipates “a struggle.” Hill set the fastest time at the final pre-season test at Estoril, 0.35 seconds clear of Schumacher, and Williams completed around 2,500 miles with its FW17 chassis — significantly more than Benetton, which has experienced reliability issues with the B195. Renault’s chief engineer Bernard Dudot believes Benetton is the less prepared team, given that Williams has worked with Renault since 1989 while Benetton has only just switched.

McLaren raised concerns about the new standardised Intertechnique refuelling equipment — required across all teams following Jos Verstappen’s 1994 German Grand Prix pit fire — after suffering a 10-kilogram fuel leak in a factory test. Intertechnique traced the fault to a defective valve and modified the equipment accordingly.

A threatened drivers’ strike over the terms of the 1995 FIA Super Licences — which allowed the FIA to demand promotional appearances and forbade drivers from criticising the championship — was resolved by the governing body before the season opener.