[Official] Round 11: German Grand Prix

[frostie]

In one of the most controversial and incident filled seasons in recent memory Red Bull will look to put their British Grand Prix saga behind them during this weekend’s German Grand Prix from Hockenheim.

Last time out at Silverstone the Milton Keynes based team was once more the centre of attention when Mark Webber had a new front wing removed from his car and given to teammate Sebastian Vettel. With the Australian now fully aware of his place within the hierarchy of his team he proceeded to dominate the race after giving no quarter to his teammate at the first turn. Vettel ended the first lap in the pits with a puncture as Webber led the field for the rest of the day with only the safety car heading him, ironically this gave Vettel the chance to salvage his day and secure six points with a seventh place finish.

Red Bull ended the weekend with 31 points, only one point more than McLaren, from a race that the team should have delivered a crushing one-two such was their superiority. The team have consistently shot themselves in the foot this season and with the summer break ever closer the team know that the next two weekends are crucial with back to back races.

McLaren brought an extensive aerodynamic upgrade to Silverstone that ran only on Friday and while results did not meet expectations Red Bull must be aware that their opponents are exceptionally well placed should the upgrade work either at Hockenheim or the Hungaroring next weekend.

The Hockenheimring Circuit

Lewis Hamilton was the victor at the last race Hockenheim hosted the German Grand Prix. Hamilton dominated en route to winning the title in 2008 even when severely handicapped by a tactical blunder by his McLaren team. Then Toyota driver Timo Glock had a massive crash coming out of the last corner that caused a safety car to be deployed and while the majority of the field pitted Hamilton stayed out. With Nelson Piquet in second Hamilton was spared his blushes by the Brazilian holding up compatriot Felipe Massa and allowing Hamilton to make his pitstop 16 laps from the end and maintain track position before coasting to the finish to win by 5 seconds.

Hockenheim was redeveloped in 2002 with a circuit that lost the vast majority of its former character. Whereas in the past the circuit was one of the fastest and most fearsome visited during the near the current configuration is much slower and more technical. The new layout though has seen some exciting races throughout the field but generally races are dominated by one driver as was the case in 2003 when Juan Pablo Montoya would have lapped the entire field had he not slowed down for the last few laps before winning by over a minute.

Can we expect the unexpected this weekend?

This weekend’s race though promises to be very exciting with poor weather expected for practice and qualifying before cool race day temperatures. There is the possibility of a race weekend similar to Canada with drivers struggling with tyre issues. To illustrate the issue that Bridgestone expect to encounter with tyres they will bring the super soft and the hard compound tyres. If the weekend follows a similar pattern to Canada it should be expected that everyone will qualify on the softer rubber, Red Bull showed in the Montreal race that it is impossible to avoid mass tyre wear on high fuel and the hard tyre. While most races have been single stoppers this year the tyre wear and short pitlane, expected total pitstop times is 18-19 seconds, mean this race could be a two stopper for the majority of the field.

Since the redevelopment this race has not been won from outside the top three on the grid with the pole sitter winning four of the six races. Qualifying is obviously crucially important but if the tyre issue does materialise the race could be won by any of the leading drivers but the favourites will once more be the Red Bull’s, McLaren’s and Alonso.

The home crowd will have a lot of compatriots to cheer on with Germans Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil, Timo Glock and Nico Hülkenberg all competing this weekend. Vettel will obviously be keen to move on from Silverstone but at Mercedes Schumacher will be keen just to show some progress. The seven times champion has struggled on his return to Formula 1 and has been outpaced by teammate Rosberg but a return home could invigorate Schumacher. He still remains the only German to win the world title but those days are becoming a fast fading memory with Schumi just a shadow of his former self. He has struggled all season with slow and medium speed corners and Hockenheim is filled with these so the chances of seeing a fight back are slim but with the team expecting more from recent developments he could challenge for a decent haul of points. Rosberg on the other hand will be keen to add to a promising British race when he finished in third.

Heading into this weekend the top four drivers are separated by 24 points in the title chase so theoretically any of them could leave as title leader but with 25 points for a win changes can rapidly occur and with poor weather for Friday and Saturday expected a “green” race track on Sunday could lead to an exciting race with leading drivers out of position and chasing back through the field.

BBC Schedule

Friday 23 July

Practice one 0855-1035 Red Button

Practice two 1255-1435 Red Button

Saturday 24 July

Practice three 0955-1105 Red Button

Qualifying 1210-1420 BBC One

Sunday 25 July

Race 1210-1515 BBC One

Year	Driver	Team
2008	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren
2006	Michael Schumacher	Ferrari
2005	Fernando Alonso	Renault
2004	Michael Schumacher	Ferrari
2003	Juan Pablo Montoya	Williams
2002	Michael Schumacher	Ferrari

Misc

Weather

Chatroom

[Born Racer]

Originally Posted by frostie

the super soft and the hard compound tyres.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with this if it's not a wet race.

[tblincoe]

Enough storylines to fill a book for this one, looking forward to it indeed!

Here's the pre-race BPR chart:

[broadrun96]

Is there a way to block/resize that chart? Scrolling side-to-side to read through the intro just to accommodate a graphic that has ZERO interest to me is REALLY annoying.

[JamesH]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Is there a way to block/resize that chart? Scrolling side-to-side to read through the intro just to accommodate a graphic that has ZERO interest to me is REALLY annoying.

Agreed - it knackers the whole page.

[Grandpa_Rob]

Rain predicted for both Friday & Saturday may leave some teams with setup problems for Sundays race which is predicted to be dry, l guess this is where simulator setups come in handy. Really looking forward to this race, after all the dust has not quite settled at Red Bull and McClaren using a blown Diffuser system that seemingly didn't work at Silverstone. How many Germans will finish in the top ten and will Kobayashi put in another good one.

[tblincoe]

Originally Posted by JamesH

Agreed - it knackers the whole page.

Sorry guys and gals, the forum software doesn't offer any obvious way to block image sizes down to the dimensions of the thread; unfortunately I didn't know that until the image was already posted.

Obviously it's fixed now, but apologies again for the annoyance!

[broadrun96]

No problems, was just asking if there was a way but I'm glad it wasn't taken personally and thanks for the adjustment

[AUSRSR]

Can't believe how much they've destroyed this track. It used to be brilliant. Now it's boring! Thanks Herman.

Bring on the rain!

[Chatters]

I had a dream...

In what can only be described as a truly amazing turn of form, I dreamed that a Mr. Heikki Kovalainen, in a stunning turn of form, put his Lotus on pole, with Webber second and Vettel third.

So that's my prediction for qualifying.

[Rgms320]

Originally Posted by Chatters

I had a dream...

In what can only be described as a truly amazing turn of form, I dreamed that a Mr. Heikki Kovalainen, in a stunning turn of form, put his Lotus on pole, with Webber second and Vettel third.

So that's my prediction for qualifying.

Don't eat pizza just before bedtime.

[Alan Raine]

Just watching first practice on the red button. Karun Chandhok is doing the commentary alongside Anthony Davidson and is very good.

[Grandpa_Rob]

Friday practice one had more spins than a rinse cycle, looks like Hamilton has blown his blown diffuser.....

[ECW Dan Selby]

Karun did a fantastic job - I'd like to see him in there more often apart from the fact i'd rather he were racing

I couldn't believe how knowledgeable he was. That question on who posted the same lap times at Jerez in 1997 was crazy, especially the fact he knew the exact time to boot.

Enjoyable practice session. Congrats to Sutil, who I think could potentially have a fantastic weekend here. I struggled for the first half hour to relax and enjoy it, because all I could do was keep trying to piece which parts led on to the old circuit I do miss those skinny wings trying to negotiate the stadium section, which would have been nigh on impossible today!

Selby

[Fox89]

Originally Posted by ECW Dan Selby

Enjoyable practice session. Congrats to Sutil, who I think could potentially have a fantastic weekend here. I struggled for the first half hour to relax and enjoy it, because all I could do was keep trying to piece which parts led on to the old circuit I do miss those skinny wings trying to negotiate the stadium section, which would have been nigh on impossible today!

Selby

Yeah I totally agree. I don't usually find myself as the sort of person who misses 'the good old days' but I do rather think they've sterilised this circuit far too much. What's so wrong with having a few trees in camera shot down the straights eh?

[GolddustMini]

karun was very good at the commentating lark, very informative. his sign off at the end was good 'i hope i never have time to come back and do it again'

[bjohnsonsmith]

It's a shame what they did to the track, nevertheless looking forward to the race.

[Sodemo]

They could have cut the circuit in half, rather than into a quarter of what it was.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by tblincoe

Sorry guys and gals, the forum software doesn't offer any obvious way to block image sizes down to the dimensions of the thread; unfortunately I didn't know that until the image was already posted.

Obviously it's fixed now, but apologies again for the annoyance!

It's not fixed, the problem persists.

It's fixed thanks.

[Dead-Eye]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

It's a shame what they did to the track, nevertheless looking forward to the race.

I actually think it's a pretty decent track, compared to many other new ones. Or it would be, if they had built it from scratch somewhere instead of ruining the old one for it.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Dead-Eye

I actually think it's a pretty decent track, compared to many other new ones. Or it would be, if they had built it from scratch somewhere instead of ruining the old one for it.

Looks like they've butchered it.

What are the drivers saying about it?

[Fox89]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

Looks like they've butchered it.

What are the drivers saying about it?

Well it's been in its current layout since 2002 so the drivers are used to it and not really saying anything about it at all.

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by Fox89

Well it's been in its current layout since 2002 so the drivers are used to it and not really saying anything about it at all.

Astonishing that it is that long! I'd have guessed it was 3 or 4 years ago. It saddens me every time the circus arrives at Hockenheim. It wasn't that it was a particularly great track, more that it was different. It seems now that all new tracks are the same and any change to a traditional circuit makes it more like the others.

F1 needs variety.

[pannenmann]

I do have the impression though that the problem arises not only from F1 alone. SOme tracks are also changed to fit MotoGP. And while they're investing money they want to make sure a max variety of series can take part, so they also ask what GP2 wants etc and then you have a track as slick and boring as most are today. Apart from security issues the different series should just race on any given track and not give that much input as nowadays. The idea that a track has to adapt to the drivers/cars and not vice versa seems very odd.

[Fox89]

Astonishing that it is that long! I'd have guessed it was 3 or 4 years ago

Possibly because since 2007 it's only hosted a race on alternate years?

But yeah, it only seems like a few years ago that they were racing on the old layout. I think just because the old layout through the forest was so iconic. And although I miss those long runs through the trees, we probably do the new layout a disservice as it has actually produced some pretty good racing over the years.