F1-Blog

German Grand Prix

The German grand prix proved interesting on a number of fronts. The Bridgestone/Ferrari combination showed again that the Japanese tyre giant has taken a substantial step up in performance of late, even the new 'experimental' Michelin tyre had not got the pace needed.

The Renault's showed that they do require the 'outlawed' mass damper system they have employed for the past 18 months, as the car was not it's settled easy to drive self (with Fisi calling the car un-drivable in his second stint), it also seems to have caused blistering to the tyres on the car in the race.

McLaren also showed they have found some performance from somewhere, yes it's not as much as they need, but it's a clear step up, and last but not least Honda have found the level of pace that they showed in the early stages of the season.

Did all of these factors then make for a good race? Well no, the Ferrari's ran off and hid after the mistakenly short fuelled Kimi Raikkonen had to pit on lap 10.

So if we ignore the scarlet cars what do we make of the rest of the bunch?

Well, although Kimi was short fuelled, and then had a stuck wheel during the first pit stop (for the second week running) he fought through and came 3rd, a great drive by the Fin, and shows why so many teams are fighting for his signature at the end of the year. Pedro de la Rossa showed decent pace as well, however his engine packed up on him early on in the race.

The pitting of the leading McLaren allowed the Ferrari's to take the first two spot's and have an unhindered race to the flag. However the other teams running on Japanese rubber showed it was the tyre of choice, with both the Toyota and Williams cars setting good pace.

Barrichello suffered an engine failure on lap 18, this caused him to retire from the race, leaving only button to make point's for the Japanese Honda team.

Button was now running in third behind the quickly disappearing Ferrari's. He pitted on lap 15, showing just how much pace the Ferrari's had in the bag. Alonso was loosing ground in fifth to team mate Fisichella when both he and Massa pitted on lap 19.

Lap 30 brought a big crash from Jacques Villeneuve, who looked to have something in his suspension break as he was mid corner, the car seemed to loose it's front end and come to a halt in the barriers leading onto the home straight. Both him and team mate Nick Heidfeld had separate coming together’s on lap one with other cars, this could have been the root cause of the failure. Nick Heidfeld had already retired after the lap one incident, meaning both of the German BMW cars were out of their home GP.

Fisichella started to struggle with his Renault, allowing Alonso to catch up and overtake him in the stops, Button, Raikkonen and Mark Webber where in a battle for the last podium step.

The weekend of the Toyota driver Ralph Schumacher got worse, he was penalised with a drive through penalty for speeding in the pits. However Trulli after starting from the back of the grid (penalised for an engine change) had made his way into the points scoring positions. 

The 3 way race for the third step came to an abrupt end, when Webber's Cosworth engine let go allowing the race to be between Jenson and Kimi.

The race had one final climax, with Trulli coming on fast behind the obviously suffering Renault of Fisichella. The Renault however had just enough pace to fend off the Toyota assault until the end of the race.

The final kick came when after the race, the stewards deemed the rear wings of the Midland Toyota cars to be flexing, and disqualified them from the race. As they only finished 13th and 14th there were no point's involved, however it seems that even the smaller teams are now trying out the 'flexi' technologies the larger teams have obviously been running.

1.  M.SCHUMACHER  Ferrari      1h27m51.693s
2.  MASSA         Ferrari      +0.7s
3.  RAIKKONEN     McLaren      +13.2s
4.  BUTTON        Honda        +18.9s
5.  ALONSO        Renault      +23.7s
6.  FISICHELLA    Renault      +24.8s
7.  TRULLI        Toyota       +26.5s
8.  KLIEN         Red Bull     +48.1s
9.  R.SCHUMACHER  Toyota       +60.4s
10. LIUZZI        Toro Rosso   +1 lap
11. COULTHARD     Red Bull     +1 lap
12. SPEED         Toro Rosso   +1 lap
DQ. ALBERS        Midland      +1 lap
DQ. MONTEIRO      Midland      +2 laps
R.  WEBBER        Williams     +8 laps
R.  SATO          Super Aguri  +29 laps
R.  VILLENEUVE    BMW          +37 laps
R.  BARRICHELLO   Honda        +49 laps
R.  HEIDFELD      BMW          +58 laps
R.  DE LA ROSA    McLaren      +65 laps
R.  YAMAMOTO      Super Aguri  +66 laps
R.  ROSBERG       Williams     +67 laps

Fastest lap: M.SCHUMACHER  1m16.357s