Ferrari, but set a fastest lap of 1:21.180 on lap 58, almost 1.7 seconds faster than Alesi's fastest lap of the race. Alesi's attempts to keep the lead were not helped by lapped traffic getting in his way, as well as losing five seconds at the Veedol chicane by running wide onto the gravel. In the closing laps, Schumacher caught Alesi, overtaking him on the outside of the chicane on lap 65. Schumacher opened the gap to two and a half seconds, and won the race after 67 laps to secure his seventh victory of the season in a time of 1:39:59.044. Hill, watching from the side of the track, applauded Schumacher's win. Schumacher attempted to stop his car to give Hill a lift back to the , but was unable due to a slipping clutch. Alesi held position to finish second in his Ferrari, with Coulthard third – 35 seconds behind. Completing the points-scorers, Barrichello finished fourth, ahead of Herbert and Irvine. The latter two had battled for much of the race: they collided on lap 31, dropping both behind Barrichello and causing Herbert to make a pit stop for a new front wing; later, Irvine spun while attempting to lap Papis, allowing Herbert back in front. Outside the points, Brundle finished seventh for Ligier, ahead of the recovering Häkkinen, whose eighth position, two laps down on Schumacher, was a major disappointment for Mercedes in its home country. Minardi drivers Pedro Lamy and Luca Badoer finished ninth and eleventh, with Salo in tenth position, the latter making an unscheduled pit stop to change a punctured tyre after colliding with Jean-Christophe Boullion during the race. The Sauber driver retired as a result of damage sustained in this incident. Papis, Diniz, Tarquini and Délétraz completed the field. Of the retirements, Roberto Moreno stopped his Forti with a driveshaft failure, while Montermini endured a fraught pitstop on lap 42. The Pacific team's fuel rig malfunctioned, and, in the confusion, refueller Paul Summerfield sustained a fractured left femur when he was hit by the car as it left its pit box. Montermini consequently ran out of fuel on lap 45. Race classification Post-race Journalist Alan Henry described the race as the best of the season to date, and even of recent memory, and suggested that Schumacher's performance could mark a watershed in which the German "crossed that indistinct dividing line separating the good