On this day in F1 08 March, is brought to you by TheJudge13 chronicler: Bart De Pauw
– 1998: Yet again McLaren team orders in favor of Häkkinen
1998: After two seasons of Williams-Renault supremacy, McLaren drivers Mika Häkkinen and David Couthard lived up to their pre-season favorite role by overwhelmingly dominating the 1998 season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Häkkinen took pole with only a four-hundredths of a second advantage over Coulthard, with Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari a distant third at more than seven tenths. As it turned out victory was decided at the first corner when Häkkinen made the better start to lead his Scottish teammate into the 58 laps around Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit. Both McLarens pulled away from the field at a staggering rate of three seconds per lap on an afternoon that would see them double all other cars. But despite all this dominance the inevitable McLaren win was not free from controversy.
