session was delayed until 10:05 CET due to fog and heavy rain. Several drivers went off the track during the session due to the wet weather conditions. Both Williams cars maintained their good performance from qualifying; Coulthard had the fastest time of 1:38.378 whilst Hill was third in the other Williams. Berger split them in the Ferrari for second position. Schumacher completed the top four, six-tenths of a second behind Coulthard. Approximately 90,000 spectators attended the circuit on race day. Coulthard was forced to use the Williams , which had been set up for Hill for the race itself after he spun off the track during his , stalling the engine in the process. The race was scheduled to start at 14:00 CET, but Papis stalled his Footwork in the starting lights procedure, resulting in the start being aborted, with a new start time of 14:05 CET being planned. Many of the teams started the race with wet weather tyres, but the Ferrari and McLaren teams chose to fit their cars with dry weather slick tyres. The Ferrari mechanics also raised the ride height and increased the downforce levels on Alesi and Berger's cars on the grid, making them more competitive in the wet conditions. Coulthard, from pole position, held onto the lead into the first corner, while Hill made a bad start and was overtaken by Schumacher in the run down to the corner. Irvine also passed Hill, but was later overtaken on in the opening lap. Further down the order, Frentzen was judged to have made a false start, while Papis took up his normal grid position instead of starting from the back as he should have done after stalling. Both drivers were given ten-second stop-and-go penalties in the early stages of the race. Papis' teammate, Taki Inoue, failed to take the start due to an electronic failure. The McLarens and Berger's Ferrari slipped back in the early laps of the race, with both McLarens overtaken by the Pacific and Forti cars as they dropped down the order. The McLaren chassis handled badly in the wet conditions, while the throttle response of the Mercedes engine was also too abrupt to be driven effectively in the rain. Berger dropped to ninth place suffering from an incorrectly pressured set of tyres that left him with a handling imbalance. Alesi moved up to fourth position, overtaking Herbert on lap five and