For those of you still interested in the events of 1994 found these quotes from an Autosport article;
Joan Villadeprat on Silverstone 1994;"We could almost win the title in the middle of the year, and obviously for television and everything else, that's not very good," says Villadelprat. "Also Max had decided to change the diffuser after Barcelona and it was a big thing. And Tom and Flavio were the two leaders of the revolution to try and screw up Max..."
At Silverstone Schumacher qualified second to Hill. On the formation lap he jumped ahead of the Williams, before falling back in line. Later the stewards decided to give him a stop-and-go penalty, but the team contested the decision. Schumacher was then black-flagged, and the team initially told him to ignore it, before finally telling him to come in and take the stop-and-go.
"We had the communication of that penalty late," says Villadelprat. "The rules specified that you had a time when the communication had to come from the FIA - it was a piece of paper in those days - so I argued and said this is already out of the time.
"Then there was a lot of shite, in the end we called him in, did everything that we were supposed to be doing, and we carried on and finished second."
Pat Symmonds on TC/LC rumors"If someone wanted to be really devious, they could have hidden it from me, but they couldn't have hidden it from him," says Symonds. "Michael would have had to be involved, and I don't think he would have been.
"He did some things that were unsporting, let's say, but he always did them on the spur of the moment. His instantaneous decision-making was sometimes not very good.
"But I don't think he ever had any preconceived ideas of doing anything wrong. That's why I don't think he would have gone along with anything like launch control, and absolutely he would have had to have known about it."
Hockenhiem;Schumacher retired at Hockenheim, but the big story was a huge pit fire suffered by team-mate Jos Verstappen. Yet more controversy was stirred when an FIA investigation revealed that a filter was missing from the refuelling rig. Villadelprat says it was his decision, but insists he was given verbal permission by the FIA.
Symmonds on Spa"That incident at Spa was just so bizarre," says Symonds. "The rules were very clear. If the plank was found to be below the minimum thickness, then it had to be taken off and weighed, and the weight of it had to be no less than 90 per cent of its weight new.
"So when they checked the plank it was under in one area, which was not a problem; they should have taken it off and weighed it, and they wouldn't do it. They totally ignored that and said it was illegal. So we thought that the process was wrong.
"It had been wet from P1 all the way through to the race, so we weren't 100 per cent certain that we'd got our rideheights correct. But also he'd had quite a big off during the race, where the car had clattered across the kerbs.
"Because the wear was quite localised we thought that's probably what did it. We didn't know, we couldn't tell, even these days we probably wouldn't be able to tell. So we appealed the decision. It just seemed that we could do nothing right that year."
Adelaide 1994;"He was pretty damn motivated to win the world championship, and now he had the chance to do it," continues Symonds. "I don't know how all that affected him, but it was probably the same as me. It was probably this mix of absolute determination to prove them wrong and the absolute horror of being accused of things that were not correct."
The championship was decided on lap 36 when Schumacher and Hill made contact after Michael had gone off and clipped the wall. Both men were out, but the German still had that one point advantage.
"There wasn't a moment of enjoyment in it, there really wasn't," says Symonds. "I remember after the accident I just went ballistic, I'm the calmest person in the pitlane, and that was too much for me. I honestly didn't believe that we'd won the championship. I thought, 'Here we go again, another bloody enquiry'.
"I didn't believe that he did it on purpose. I know the steering was broken, I could see the data, and I didn't think that he had control of the car. I guess after '97 with [Jacques] Villeneuve, and then Monaco 2006, I wondered about '94. As I said earlier, there were times when Michael's judgement was not very good."
On the B194"We produced an absolutely wonderful car," says Symonds. "The changes that were made to the technical regulations after Imola, things like cutting the diffuser down, putting vents in the airboxes, putting the plank on, each one of them made our absolutely wonderful car average, or even below average, because I think by the end of the season the Williams was a better car.
"We did four races less than anyone else, two of which were podiums. Honestly at the end of '94 I got within hours of just resigning and leaving motorsport. I was so fed up with the accusations. I knew that I had personally done nothing wrong.
"I felt that there were forces at work, and I really didn't want to be part of this any more. It was my first exposure to some of the Machiavellian politics that occur in F1 from time to time, and it was a bit much for me.
"Equally, it made the 1995 victory just so much better. It's still the most important thing I've done in my life, winning the two championships in '95. To my mind it justified that we were a good team, we were competitive, and the accusations levelled at us in '94 were just not justified."
On 1994"We'll never know what was behind it all," says Symonds. "But there is no doubt that proper practices were ignored, because people felt that the ends justified the means. I'm absolutely certain of that. What the end was, to this day I'm not quite sure."
Villadelprat adds: "It was really hard year, because there was a lot of things that happened to us. But I can guarantee you that as far as I know, the car was absolutely perfectly legal. "I think we caught everybody by surprise. We broke the establishment a little bit. And when you do that, you always have a price to pay, and I think we paid that price through the year."
For anyone interested the article in full is here;
http://www.autosport.com/premium/featur ... 1462953516