in accordance with the regulations. Though 26 cars qualified for the race, only 25 took the start: Martini retired on the parade lap, his Minardi car suffering a gearbox problem. Race Hill had a bad start from pole position, allowing Schumacher to overtake him into turn one. Panis, who started from tenth position in a Ligier, spun at the first corner after a nudge from Katayama, hitting the wall in the process and retiring from the race. Herbert, racing the spare Benetton chassis, dropped three places by the end of lap one, dropping behind Häkkinen and the two Ferrari cars. Blundell also made a poor start, dropping to fourteenth position after his gearbox changed from first to third gear as he accelerated away from the grid. At the end of the first lap, the race order was Schumacher leading Hill, from Coulthard, Häkkinen, Berger, Alesi, Herbert, Irvine, Katayama and Salo, with the two Tyrrell drivers switching places on the next lap. At the start of lap three, Hill attempted to overtake Schumacher heading into turn five, but Schumacher closed the door on Hill. Hill lost the advantage for a moment, with teammate Coulthard drawing alongside, but unable to get past with Hill on the inside line into turn six. Henceforth, Schumacher and Hill began to gradually pull away from Coulthard, who realised that he could not match the pace of the leaders and settled into his own rhythm, albeit one that was still comfortably faster than the cars behind him. By lap five, Herbert had dropped down to tenth position, unhappy with the handling of the spare car and having been overtaken by Irvine, Salo and Katayama. On lap ten, Schumacher lapped last-placed Diniz for the first time; the presence of slower cars a constant factor for the front-runners thereafter. On the same lap Frentzen retired from 12th position with electrical failure. He was joined by Schiattarella two laps later after his Simtek car developed a steering problem. Irvine made a pit stop earlier than expected on lap fifteen, retiring from the race with a gearbox actuator problem. On the same lap, Katayama spun at the fourth corner, stalled his car in the process and retired from the race. The two retirements meant Herbert moved back up to eighth position. Alesi was the first of the leading drivers to make a scheduled pit stop on lap 17, rejoining the track