in eleventh place. Barrichello, Irvine's teammate, retired a lap later, driving into the pit lane slowly with a gearbox problem. On the same lap, Verstappen retired his Simtek car with a clutch problem. The Benetton and Williams teams were employing different pit stop strategies – the Benetton team were planning a three stop strategy whereas the Williams team were only planning for two stops. Schumacher made a pit stop on lap 18, but was momentarily baulked by the slowing Jordan car of Barrichello as he was entering the pitlane. Schumacher exited the stop behind Berger, but overtook the Austrian driver at the beginning of the next lap. Hill, who had remained close behind Schumacher before the German made a pit stop, made his own stop on lap 21, exiting the pitlane in front of Schumacher. Coulthard took the lead of the race for one lap, before pitting and dropping behind the two leaders and the yet-to-stop Häkkinen and Berger. Häkkinen and Berger were the final drivers of the leading teams to pit, however, the McLaren mechanics had trouble getting the fuel hose off the Finn's car when he stopped on lap 23, losing him ten seconds. Several other teams experienced problems with attaching and detaching the refuelling nozzles, and occasional small sprays of fuel were observed, reinforcing the problem experienced by McLaren with the equipment before the race meeting. Berger, adopting a strategy of pitting late, was the only driver not to have stopped by lap 24 and thus was third, with Hill, Schumacher, Coulthard, Alesi and Salo the other drivers in the top six places. Salo's stop had been faultless, gaining him significant time on those drivers who had been running in front of him. By this stage Gachot had retired his Pacific car after it got stuck in fifth gear. Berger made his stop on lap 27, but had problems leaving the pit lane after a communication problem between him and his mechanics nearly led to him leaving the pit lane with a loose wheel nut on the front right-hand wheel. The pit "lollipop", signalling the driver when to leave, was raised and lowered again in quick succession, preventing Berger from leaving until the wheel nut was sufficiently tightened. The miscommunication cost Berger 13 seconds, dropping him back to seventh position. Alesi fell behind Salo and Häkkinen after the first set of pit stops, Salo overtaking him on