I know there's a lot of Schumacher-hate out there, but I kind of felt the 1994 title was deserved despite what happened in the last race. The FIA banned him from two races, and disqualified him from a second place in the British GP, which artificially set the stage for a close championship finish. Effectively, 6 points were taken from him in the British GP, and due to exclusion from the Italian and Portuguese Grands Prix: Even if Hill won both races, let's say 2nd at Italy and 3rd at Portugal (since Coulthard ran right behind Hill all race long), that means the infamous showdown at Adelaide never would have occurred.
The cause of all this was maneuvering from 2nd place on the grid to 1st place, during a corner or two of the warm-up/formation lap: A minor and meaningless offense. I felt that after the events of several driver injuries and deaths in the sport, this was nothing more than crap, and Schumacher knew that they could penalize him for just about anything...Except for crashing into someone. Maybe it was the rebellious 20-year-old in me at the time, but I still feel he gave a pretty good middle finger to the FIA rather than to Damon Hill, who was really more of an innocent bystander in the game. Now, had Michael muscled Hill over somewhere on the Jones Straight, and not at the slowest corner of the track (which he did), I would think he was a dangerous driver to try that trick.
Yes, Michael Schumacher went on to do a couple of things that weren't good for the sport, and I could create an entire list. But we can not retroactively dissect the 1994 World Championship by counting transgressions that would occur in the future. Simply put, the punishment at the '94 Brazilian GP was far stricter than any given by the FIA at the time, for an action that had absolutely nothing to do with the results nor sporting activities on the track, and was it was not a gesture that harmed the integrity of the sport nor governing body in any way.
We can argue the legality of the Benetton B194 until the cows come home, but the fact is if the FIA wanted to ban the team or the cars, they could have, as they had done to Tyrrell in 1984. Even McLaren was given an end-of-year slap on the wrist for their launch control shenanigans at the end of 1994 (of course, their car wasn't that competitive that year, anyhow), and every team finds a way to exploit loopholes. Some get caught, some do not.
