He required extraction by marshals to enable his return to the pit lane. The race started at 14:00 BST on 5 May. Approximately 40,000 people were in attendance. Close to the start, weather conditions were partly cloudy with the air temperature ranging between . Former racing drivers Damon Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti commanded the drivers to start their engines. The first caution was triggered on the first lap when the drivers in the first two rows of the grid were not alongside each other. Competitive racing began at the start of lap two, and Tracy maintained his pole position advantage heading into the first corner. Farther back, Fernández made contact with Tagliani and drifted wide to the left side of the track but managed to continue. Vasser drove into the pit lane and got out of his car to retire with left-front suspension damage caused by his front tyre turning in. Tracy began to pull away from the rest of the field, extending his lead to 2.088 seconds over Bourdais by the start of the eleventh lap. Junqueira maintained third position, followed by Tagliani in fourth and Servià in fifth. Four laps later, Carpentier slowed momentarily and was overtaken by Fernández on the backstraight for eighth place. At the front of the field, Bourdais and Junqueira began catching Tracy. Junqueira lowered Tracy's lead to 1.401 seconds as the fastest lap of the race at the time was set by Carpentier who completed a circuit in 38.515 seconds on his 18th lap. The first round of green flag pit stops began on lap 49 when Tagliani, Monteiro and Lavín entered the pit lane for fuel and tyres. During this period, Manning ran off the circuit and into a gravel trap at Paddock Hill bend. Haberfeld, caught out by his cold tyres, went wide into some grass at Graham Hill bend. Tracy ran more downforce than his nearest rivals and used more fuel as a consequence. He was delayed by the slower Lavín losing two seconds before he made his pit stop on the 55th lap. Bourdais spent one extra lap on the track with a low amount of fuel when he entered pit lane on the following lap. The additional time Bourdais spent on the circuit, and his teammate Tracy being delayed, enabled him to assume the lead with a seven-tenths of a second advantage over Tracy after all pit stops had been completed. Bourdais and Tracy ran within about a half second of each other during the following 24 laps before a second caution was necessitated for an accident on lap 80.