Villeneuve again took pole and victory in Spain, before retiring at the following round in Canada. He was back on winning form by the British GP, and again at the Hungarian race, while Austria and Luxembourg took his race win toll to seven. Notably, he was disqualified from the penultimate race in Japan having ignored yellow flags on two consecutive laps during practice.
In the background, Frentzen was chugging on, winning the occasional second place and a brace of thirds. Despite retiring from a total of five of the 17 races, and only winning one race, his second place in Japan meant the Rothmans Williams Renault team had secured the Constructors' title. Meanwhile, Villeneuve took the Drivers' Championship, despite a controversial collision with Schumacher in the season finale at Jerez, in which Schumacher was accused of deliberately colliding with the Canadian. And despite only winning the one race across the season, Heinz-Harald Frentzen finished second in the Drivers' Championship due to Schumacher's being excluded following the incident.
Was the FW19 quite as impressive as the FW18? Its on-track records suggests not. Then again, it had big boots to fill and, ultimately, still secured the drivers’ and constructors’ crowns. A bad car? Far from it.
Photography by James Lynch, main image courtesy of Motorsport Images.