The 1996 Formula One season was the 47th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1996 FIA Formula One World Championship, which commenced on March 10, 1996, and ended on October 13 after sixteen races. Two World Championship titles were awarded, one for Drivers and one for Constructors.
Damon Hill won the Drivers Championship two years after being beaten by a point by Michael Schumacher, making him the only son of a World Champion to have won the title. Hill, who had finished runner-up for the past two seasons, was seriously threatened only by his teammate, newcomer Jacques Villeneuve. Williams Renault easily won the Constructors title, as there was no other competitor strong enough to post a consistent challenge throughout the championship. This was also the beginning of the end of Williams' 1990s dominance, as it was announced that Hill and designer Adrian Newey would depart at the conclusion of the season, with engine manufacturer Renault also leaving after 1997.
Two-time defending drivers' title holder Schumacher had moved to Ferrari and despite numerous reliability problems, they had gradually developed into a front-running team by the end of the season. Defending Constructors champions Benetton Renault began their decline towards the middle of the grid, having lost key personnel due to Schumacher's departure, and failed to win a race. Olivier Panis took the only victory of his career at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Read more about 1996 Formula One Season: Teams and Drivers, Formula One 1996 Race Schedule, Rule Changes, Grands Prix
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“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Methoughts a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)