in front of teammate David Coulthard, and a further 0.2 seconds ahead of Schumacher. The McLaren, Jordan, Footwork and Pacific teams also took part in these test sessions. Hill was also under some additional pressure going into the weekend, as his wife, Georgie, was due to give birth to their third child imminently. There was one driver change going into the event: the Footwork team's lead driver, Gianni Morbidelli, was replaced by compatriot Massimiliano Papis, an International Formula 3000 race winner who had also been the test driver for Team Lotus in 1994, before the outfit withdrew from the sport ahead of the 1995 season. Papis brought valuable sponsorship from Altea, a tie manufacturer, to the underfunded team, which supplemented the income already being provided by his pay driver teammate, Taki Inoue, to cover the team's budget for the year. Morbidelli was kept on as the team's test driver, and returned to racing action at the later in the year. Pre-race discussion centred on the following year's driver line-up, with Schumacher rumoured to be moving to Ferrari to replace Berger, who was considering a move to Williams. Hill's future was also uncertain, as was his teammate David Coulthard's, due to the McLaren team possessing an option on his services for . Sauber driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen was also linked to a possible vacant position for 1996 in the Williams team. Schumacher's future plans dictated the rest of the driver market, due to his status as the reigning World Champion—and, indeed, the only such champion of all the contemporary drivers—and reputation as the best driver currently in Formula One. It was also reported that Schumacher's teammate, Johnny Herbert, was in imminent danger of losing his Benetton seat to test driver Jos Verstappen, who was available due to the collapse of the Simtek team after the and was contractually owed race drives by team principal Flavio Briatore. Despite taking a podium finish earlier in the year, Herbert had rarely been close to Schumacher's pace and had only completed two laps in the two previous Grands Prix. A potential new entry was also being discussed: the Japanese racing car constructor Dome was in the process of building a Formula One car with which to enter the World Championship in . Several teams had made modifications to their cars in preparation for the event. Ferrari made changes to the 412T2 chassis's sidepods to improve airflow