Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories The Race

Season 10 of Bring Back V10s is here!

Karun Chandhok and Edd Straw join Glenn Freeman to look back on a memorable weekend at Silverstone, where Damon Hill came agonisingly close to claiming his first F1 victory in front of his home crowd.

But a rare Renault engine failure for Hill allowed his Williams team-mate Alain Prost to claim a then-record 50th win, while Prost's bitter rival Ayrton Senna stopped on the final lap of the race for the third year running. 

The weekend played out with tension brewing between the FIA and teams over the legality of driver aids, and Bernie Ecclestone taking shots at Indycar racing where reigning F1 champion Nigel Mansell was making international headlines.

We also get the inside story of how Williams upset one of its sponsors so badly that they decided to quit F1 at the end of that season. 

We've got one more 1997 Revisited episode for you before this series takes a break for the small matter of series 10 of Bring Back V10s! 

To sign off on the first half of the season, we head back to Silverstone, where Jacques Villeneuve got his campaign back on track with victory, despite suffering a problem in the pits that left him stationary for over half a minute. 

Villeneuve's recovery was aided by title rival Michael Schumacher retiring, and a late engine failure for Mika Hakkinen, who looked on course to take his first F1 win, despite McLaren taking a puzzling approach to the first half of the race when Hakkinen was stuck behind his struggling team-mate David Coulthard. 

And at last there is something to celebrate for the Damon Hill fans, as the reigning world champion picked up his first point of the year with Arrows.

1997 Revisited will resume in September with our look back at the German Grand Prix. 

To celebrate The Race Members' Club launching on Patreon, we've dug out this never-before-released interview with Williams founder and F1 technical genius Patrick Head, revisiting several key storylines from his team during the V10 era. 

Some of Patrick's comments were clipped up for previous episodes, but the entire interview has never been heard uncut before - until now! 

So join Bring Back V10s host Glenn Freeman for a little journey through some of Williams' biggest moments from the 1990s and 2000s, featuring tales of Nigel Mansell (several times), Adrian Newey, Jacques Villeneuve, and 'The Walrus'...

Michael Schumacher appeared to take control of the 1997 F1 title fight with a commanding performance at the French Grand Prix, where a newly-blond Jacques Villeneuve had one of his scrappiest weekends of the season. 

In the latest episode of our 1997 Revisited series, Glenn Freeman and the team look back on the main talking points from that weekend at Magny-Cours, including Jarno Trulli's call-up to race for Prost, more misery for Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher doing his brother Ralf a favour, and what on earth was going wrong for Villeneuve and Williams. 

The 1997 Canadian Grand Prix featured all kinds of drama: Jacques Villeneuve crashed out of his home race early on, some drivers could barely make a set of tyres last 10 laps, David Coulthard lost victory when his car stalled while making a precautionary pitstop, and Michael Schumacher claimed the win in a race that was cut short when Olivier Panis crashed heavily in his Prost, breaking both of his legs. 

Glenn Freeman, Matt Beer, Ben Anderson and Edd Straw debate all of that, plus Alex Wurz's F1 debut and how the Benetton team he joined was getting on 18 months on from losing Schumacher to Ferrari. 

Jacques Villeneuve got his faltering F1 title bid back on track at the 1997 Spanish Grand Prix, as Williams's superiority - with one car, at least - was restored at Barcelona.

Behind Villeneuve, Olivier Panis came through from the middle of the pack to claim second on Bridgestone tyres that held up much better than the Goodyears - but could he have won the race without an unwanted intervention from a lapped Eddie Irvine? 

We also discuss Ferrari's lack of pace, Michael Schumacher's lap one heroics, and what on earth was going on with Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the second Williams.