did not have any spare parts, and any crash would have marked the end of their weekend. Häkkinen was fastest, setting his time before his crash, with Alesi, Rubens Barrichello and Johnny Herbert behind. The two Williams cars were 7th and 8th, Villeneuve ahead of Damon Hill with Schumacher behind them in 9th. The race started at 14:30 CEST. During the warm-up session, Montermini crashed his Forti coming out of the tunnel, and the team's lack of a spare car meant the Italian was unable to start, leaving 21 cars on the grid. Hill overtook Schumacher into Sainte-Dévote, while further back, Jos Verstappen, who had opted to start the race on slicks, slid straight into the wall. The two Minardis were then eliminated when they tangled coming out of the first corner. Hill began to pull away while polesitter Schumacher lost control coming out of Lower Mirabeau and hit the wall. Coming into the Rascasse, Barrichello spun and retired. After five laps, there were only 13 cars remaining as Ukyo Katayama (accident), Ricardo Rosset (accident) and Diniz (transmission) retired. A significant gap began to open between the leaders and Eddie Irvine in fourth. A queue of eight cars formed behind the slow Ferrari. Berger retired from third place on the 10th lap with gearbox trouble leaving 12 cars, while Heinz-Harald Frentzen damaged his front wing trying to pass Irvine, dropping to second last, ahead of Luca Badoer. On lap 31, Martin Brundle spun off, which left only 11 cars in the race. Three laps later, Irvine was passed when Panis forced his way through at the Loews hairpin. Irvine lost control, became stuck and had undone his seatbelts before he restarted his car with the assistance of the marshals. Hill, meanwhile, had briefly lost the lead to Alesi when he made a pit stop on lap 30 to change to slicks as the track began to dry, but regained it a lap later when he overtook the Frenchman (who was still on wet tyres) on the track. Alesi made his pit stop shortly afterwards, allowing Hill to extend his lead to nearly 30 seconds and continue untroubled at the front until the 40th lap, when a failed oil pump caused his engine to blow coming out of the tunnel, his first retirement of the season. Alesi then led for 20 laps, before his suspension failed, handing the lead to Panis.