2008 Grand Prix of Germany, No Salvation for Kimi in 6th

| Sunday Race Day – Hamilton Wins, Piquet 2nd, Massa 3rd

Lewis Hamilton charged from behind to pass shock leader Nelson Piquet and take a remarkable victory at Hockenheim in a race turned inside out by a safety car period.

Felipe Massa had to settle for third, ahead of Nick Heidfeld, Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen.

It looked like a straightforward victory for the McLaren driver until Timo Glock – who had run as high as third in his Toyota thanks to a very long first stint and was up to eighth between Sebastian Vettel and Alonso – had a massive accident at the exit of the final corner on lap 35.

The Toyota had suffered a rear suspension failure and slammed heavily into the pit wall, causing a safety car period. Glock was taken to hospital for checks, but appeared to have escaped injury.

The full course yellow was a huge stroke of luck for Renault driver Piquet, who had been running near the tail of the field on a one-stop strategy but pitted just moments before the caution.

The majority of the rest of the field then pitted, allowing Piquet to move up to third behind Hamilton and Heidfeld, who chose to stay out in the belief that they could pull far enough away from the pack before making their last stops.

However the strategy looked destined to fail for Hamilton, as in the nine laps between the green and his stop he could only establish a 13 second advantage over main rivals Piquet and Massa.

He rejoined behind Kovalainen but quickly re-passed his teammate and then started hunting down the Renault and the Ferrari – gaining over one second per lap.

Hamilton caught Massa on lap 56 and wasted no time in surging past the Brazilian into the hairpin. Massa tried to retaliate into the following complex, but was edged out onto the asphalt run-off and had to let the McLaren go.

Piquet’s lead lasted only three more laps before he too fell victim to a Hamilton out-braking move into the Spitzkehre, after which the McLaren easily pulled away to score another memorable victory.

With Massa lacking the pace to challenge Piquet, Renault’s rookie driver emerged with a surprise second place from 17th on the grid.

Heidfeld also benefited from his strategy gamble to take fourth ahead of Kovalainen, with Raikkonen charging past Rosberg, Alonso, Vettel, Trulli and Kubica in the closing stages to take sixth having lost ground queuing behind Massa in the safety car pitstops…(read full race report and championships standings here)

Classified:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time
 1.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  1h31:20.874
 2.  Piquet        Renault               (B)  +     5.586
 3.  Massa         Ferrari               (B)  +     9.339
 4.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber            (B)  +     9.825
 5.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  +    12.411
 6.  Raikkonen     Ferrari               (B)  +    14.403
 7.  Kubica        BMW Sauber            (B)  +    22.682
 8.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  +    33.299
 9.  Trulli        Toyota                (B)  +    37.158
10.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota       (B)  +    37.625
11.  Alonso        Renault               (B)  +    38.600
12.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  +    39.111
13.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault      (B)  +    54.971
14.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari   (B)  +    59.093
15.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota       (B)  +  1:00.003
16.  Sutil         Force India-Ferrari   (B)  +  1:09.488
17.  Button        Honda                 (B)  +     1 lap

Fastest lap: Heidfeld, 1:15.987

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                      On lap
Barrichello   Honda                 (B)    52
Webber        Red Bull-Renault      (B)    41
Glock         Toyota                (B)    37

Hello there mi eraikkos! From the picture above, you can tell Kimi wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. It’s like going for a long journey with your worst enemy (a bad car). That was a pretty dull race to begin with, with hardly any excitement and we expected Lewis to run away with it. He pitted really early, and obviously yesterday’s pole was indeed a publicity stunt. Glock’s nasty crash, of which he is unharmed thankfully, brought the only hope of some interesting battles to follow and once the field bunched up together again it was a good chance for everyone to start afresh from behind and Kimi included…well it seemed so.

Ferrari got Kimi a little delayed in that safety car pit stop period so that didn’t help but what can you do. Unfortunately Kimi’s start was a disaster anyway, as we feared it might be. He was on the dirty side and Kubica on his left pulled up and got ahead. Then Kimi was stuck most of the time behind the squabbles of Trulli and Alonso. But Alonso had an even more frustrating race it seems compared to his teammate Piquet, after he was nudged outside the white pitlane line by Vettel. His revenge didn’t go down so well and Kimi benefitted and pulled some good overtaking moves on Rosberg, Alonso, Vettel and then Trulli and Kubica!.  Those were some good passes, probably the best of the whole race. Well done Kimi!

But, we hoped Kimi would be able to take the fastest lap today, which would have equalled his consecutive fastest lap tally with Alberto Ascari on 7. But Nick Heidfeld in his BMW drove hard and fast taking the fastest lap and made the best development, along with Piquet, from the safety car incident today. Kimi was fuelled heavier than the rest, but whatever his strategy was it going to be hampered due to his car balance/set-up issues.

It wasn’t a great weekend for Kimi, and it was terrible to watch because we know he has so much more to give but the Ferrari for some reason doesn’t seem to be improving. How can it be possible to struggle so much with set up the whole weekend when feeling confident after the test at the track just a few days before? The whole team really need to up their game, with Massa included. Massa hardly did anything challenging during the race, and was just cruising in second place partly due to a less competitive car than the McLaren. When everyone pitted except Lewis, I thought Massa would have at least tried to go as fast as he could. Perhaps he did but he just wasn’t fast enough obviously. McLaren thought Lewis could make up the 28 second gap to get back in the lead after pitting but even he couldn’t get near to that. So now Heikki had to let Lewis past, not being anywhere near on pace. Conveniently for Lewis, his teammate is a like a body guard. What’s up with these drivers? In my opinion, today some behaved like amateurs which frustratingly makes Lewis look brilliant. Sure, he had to fight for the win which was better to see but having a teammate let him pass and having no challenge from a completely clueless defense by Massa, Lewis took the win back like taking candy from a baby, or babies rather.

He did drive very well though, not making any hasty mistakes as he used to and thus he’s improving each race, and McLaren also are improving against Ferrari. A back-to-back win for Hamilton puts him 4 points clear of Massa and Kimi 7 behind. But I feel that today, Kimi outdrove his car as ever and managed to pass many cars despite being just about as quick as the Renaults

Hands up who has gritted teeth right now? Aye. Ron Dennis’s team radio comments to Lewis kind of touched a nerve as a Kimi fan, mainly due to all the hard times he had in that team before. "Sorry we made it a little harder for you" says Ron "It’s hard to stop Lewis from pushing" and etc. Hey, at least Hamilton finished the race, let alone winning it! But you always had to tell Kimi to stop pushing because perhaps a suspension might fail, or the engine will go pop. Yeah. It’s nice I guess that Lewis has never really had to taste utter disappointment with things like an engine failure, due to a loose bolt perhaps, or a rear wing failure, or perhaps a heat shield failure. Really nice that he reaps all these rewards from a really hard working team who feel they even need to use Ferrari information to develop, while Kimi suffered with them in the proccess. And it was McLaren’s first win in Hockenheim since 1998 with Hakkinen! Lovely. (Please note the sarcasm in tone.) Okay, enough of the bitterness but atleast you don’t have the highlight video to make.

So, it was an off weekend from Ferrari again and something really off with Kimi’s car. I know that sometimes you feel you’d rather Kimi retired early from the race so he could go home and chill out, watch some hockey or go for a ride on his Walz Hardcore bikes, well I do sometimes. Let’s be grateful, though that this time in Hockenheim he finished the race and scored 3 points. They might come in handy later. And a message to Ferrari – please, think about which driver you should really be supporting by now, because I know I’d rather have Kimi try and fend off a McLaren rather than Massa. Thank you. (Please also note that I am currently in a bad mood writing this)

I think it’s been clear since a long time that Kimi performs better in difficult situations and today was no exception, he did his best to recover from a bad start and then 12th back to 6th. Unfortunately sometimes, Felipe benefits from qualy when really it’s the race that matters and in the races, he isn’t as good but oh well, it’s up to Kimi and his engineers to overcome qualy and this odd set-up issue. Hopefully in Hungary he will feel fresh and better in the car.  We’re wishing a speedy ‘recovery’ to Raikko, and we know he doesn’t give up anyway. Keep Flying Kimi!

| Sunday Ferrari Quotes: Kimi: "Not what we were hoping for"

Felipe Massa – 3rd: "It was a difficult race. Right from the beginning, Hamilton’s pace seemed unbeatable and I understood that it would be very hard to beat him. I never had good grip and, in the final stages, I also had brake problems and was not even able to attack Piquet, whom I congratulate on the first podium of his career. We must try and understand why, this weekend, we have not been a match for our rivals. They have definitely improved, but I think this was more a case of us having taken a step backwards. However, we are still confident: we have the ability to get out of this situation, right from the next race."

Kimi Raikkonen – 6th: "This was definitely not the kind of race we had been hoping for. We have struggled all weekend and we have to try and understand why. Usually, our race pace is always good, but today that was not the case, because I almost always suffered with a lack of grip: only in the final stages did the situation improve a little bit, but it was never enough to be competitive. We have a test in Jerez, where we will try and improve the car so as to arrive in Budapest in better shape. This is definitely not a crisis, but we have to study carefully the handling of the car to understand if we have taken the right road in terms of development."

Stefano Domenicali: "This was not a good day and there’s no point denying it. Our rivals were stronger than us and we have to work out why, without however getting caught up in nebulous and superficial analysis. For the first time this season in a race, we did not have the pace we had expected to run at, with both Kimi and Felipe. We suffered constantly from a lack of grip and, in the final stages, Felipe’s brakes were also overheating which complicated still further the management of his car. The Safety Car offered us the opportunity to give it another go and all things considered, I think we made the right choice in terms of strategy, but when your pace is inadequate, it is therefore difficult to get a good result. We have to work well over the coming days to react in the right manner to return to the level we were at just two races ago."

| Race Videos – Start, Glock’s Crash, Kimi Overtakes Alonso & Vettel, Heikki Lets Lewis Pass, Press Conference

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