German GP Stats & Analysis

Germany was a very interesting race and throughout the whole weekend, it was damage limitation again for Kimi. Ferrari’s off-pace continued from Silverstone and it seems Kimi hasn’t been comfortable with the car since then. During the Hockenheim test though, Kimi said both driver and car were fit – perhaps they were but something drastically went wrong in Germany and McLaren continued to benefit from Ferrari’s slump in performance. But Hamilton fought for his second consecutive victory due to a little hiccup in strategy and the safety car but it was probably a better performance from him than in Silverstone, very tidy and remained on the ball despite having to quickly make up lost ground. Plenty of overtaking and thorough battles made up for the first quarter of the race and the results say a lot. Courtesy of Autosport.com’s Michele Merlino, and of course the extra Kimi information added by me, here are some interesting informations.

Youngest podium ever

The German Grand Prix featured the youngest podium in Formula One history. Lewis Hamilton, Nelson Piquet Jr and Felipe Massa combined for an average age of 24 years, 7 months and 1 day – narrowly beating the previous record that was set in the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix, with Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya combining an age of 24 years, 7 months and 12 days.

Nelsinho’s lucky day

Thanks to a bold strategy and a well-timed safety car period, Renault’s Piquet was able to climb up from the 14th place he occupied before the safety car intervention to a second place at the finish. This is Nelsinho’s first podium at his tenth race start.

The Brazilian was also able to complete his first six laps in the lead when Heidfeld went in for his second pitstop. Renault didn’t enjoy a podium place since Kovalainen finished second in the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix.

Qualifying notes

• For the first time since last year’s Japanese and Chinese Grand Prix, McLaren are able to score back-to-back pole positions.

• Lewis Hamilton scored his ninth pole, going at the 30th all-time spot.

• The second place in grid by Felipe Massa marks the 450th presence of Ferrari on the front row of the grid and the 20th for the Brazilian, that records his best grid position in Germany.

• Massa beat for the sixth time this season his teammate Raikkonen in qualifying and if we exclude the Australian Grand Prix, when the Finn suffered from mechanical problems, the four places that separate the pair are the biggest distance in grid that Massa put between him and his teammate this season. (This was also Kimi’s worst qualifying position apart from Australia)

• Jarno Trulli equalled his best performance in Germany, a fourth he obtained also in 2003.

• The seventh spot recorded by Kubica is his worst result of the season excluded the British Grand Prix when he was 10th but wasn’t able to take part in the final session due to mechanical problems. With a 7th by Heidfeld, BMW Sauber recorded their worst average qualifying performance of the season (9,5). Before Germany their worst showing was the French GP ( 8 ).

• For the first time in his career Sebastian Vettel is able to record two successive qualifying sessions inside the top-10.

• Nick Heidfeld equalled his worst performance of the year, a 12th place he obtained in Monaco.

• For the third time this season Piquet qualified 17th. He fared worse only in his debut race in Australia when he was 20th.

• Rubens Barrichello obtained the 18th spot in grid, the same he had in his maiden win in Hockenheim in 2000.

Race notes

• This is the first back-to-back win for McLaren since the 2007 European and Hungarian Grand Prix and the first for Hamilton since Canada and U.S.A. last year, his first two career wins. This is the first McLaren win in the German Grand Prix since 1998 (Hakkinen).

• Kimi Raikkonen stopped his sequence of fastest laps to six, one short of the all-time record held by Ascari. It was Nick Heidfeld that set the fastest lap in Germany, his second in career, thus continuing the sequence of fastest laps set by cars with odd numbers, that lasts since the start of the season.

• BMW Sauber are at their 27th straight race in the points, equalling the fourth all-time streak set by Cooper from Monaco 1959 to Monaco 1962. The Top sequence belongs to Ferrari with 55 straight races in the points from Malaysia 1999 to Malaysia 2003.

• Fernando Alonso records his worst performance in Germany. Even in 2001 with Minardi was able to finish in a better position: tenth. Worst performance on German soil also for Coulthard, that before this edition counted an eleventh in 2006 as his worst showing.

• With Nico Rosberg 10th and Kazuki Nakajima 14th Williams drought for points in the German Grand Prix continues. The last points for Frank Williams’ team in Hockenheim were scored by Montoya (5th) and Pizzonia (7th) in 2004.

The sequence of fastest laps by Kimi Raikkonen has indeed come to a painful halt, and it’s a significant sign that the Ferrari has lost ground to the McLaren and that Kimi is beginning to find difficulty in set-up and strategy:

Most consecutive fastest laps
Alberto Ascari – 7 (Belgium ’52 – Argentina ’53)
Kimi Raikkonen – 6 (Spain – Britain ’08 )
Michael Schumacher – 5 (Bahrain – Europe ’04)

All time most fastest laps
Schumacher – 76
Prost – 41
Raikkonen – 31
Mansell – 30

If you’re interested in looking at the full statistics of Kimi’s career, you can read them all in the KRS Archive here.

Here’s an insightful view from Smartie aka Nicola discussing with fellow fans in the official forum: "Kimi is known to prefer having a heavier fuel load for qualifying. He knows, if the car is on form, then he has the pace to beat most of his rivals and gains an advantage from running longer. How often have we seen seen Kimi run a few laps longer than the leaders, banging in purple sectors and emerging ahead after his own pitstop?"

"Rather than blaming Ferrari squarely, you have to look at both the team and the driver. Kimi has a preference on how to run. It seems he prefers to stick with this regardless of the other circumstances and this appears to hinder his race pace. We don’t know whether this is the best of a bad job or whether this is a mistake. Teams do not make the strategic decisions alone – they do so in conjunction with the driver who is out there getting a feel for car and track. Question is: Does Kimi need to be more adaptable if the car is not at optimum performance or do the team need to be more adaptable on other circumstances?"

This question will be answered in the next races, starting first in Hungary. First let’s see what happened in Germany, using the FIA lap chart facts. In Germany Kimi lacked pace on Friday and suffered from a great deal of oversteer and understeer especially in qualifying, but he tried to minimise these effects opting as usual for a heavier first stint for the race with hard tyres. Thus, his car looked much better on his final qualifying lap. In the race, consequently his start was hampered from this trategy as well as starting on the dirty side of the track, losing one position to Kubica. So it was the usual business, just driving and waiting to get comfortable until the first round of pit stops. Kimi pitted two laps later than Massa and the soft tyres went on. Now, Kimi was beginning to perform better. Unfortunately, this development all had to be put on pause as the safety car came out. Ferrari chose to pit Kimi with Massa at the same time, but this undoubtedly cost Kimi some important time with the tyres however we cannot be sure how it would have been better had Kimi stayed out like Lewis. Once the safety car went back in, everyone began racing hard, some failing such as Alonso. So people who claim that it was Kimi who only decided to wake up around lap 40 don’t know what they’re saying. The race resumed at lap 42, Kimi overtook Robserg on lap 43 and then passed Alonso on lap 44. Raikkonen then passed Vettel on the next lap. Trulli was next and Kimi passed him one lap later. A bit of clear air now and Kimi continued to push. So far he’s made up 5 places, having overtook Alonso again. Kubica became closer in sight and for a moment it seemed Kimi decided to cruise it home. But no, he pushed and pushed to close the gap and eventually passed Kubica for 6th. It wasn’t just Lewis racing up front, there was an intense battle between Kimi, his car and others that lasted for nearly 20 laps. Then, on lap 66 towards the end of the race, Kimi set his personal best fastest lap time of 1.16.342, which was 3 tenths of Hamilton’s fastest lap and nearly half a second off Heidfeld’s fastest lap of the race. Those were 3 hard fought  and well earned points for Kimi then and it was an interesting battle to watch. Last year it was 6 races until Kimi won again after Australia, this year it’s also been 6 since his victory in Spain. Kimi has a long and gruelling hot summer ahead of him to win again, but he’s working at it like a champion. He won’t panic eventhough we might have – he’s done this before and come out on top of it. He needs Ferrari’s support though, they wanted a world champion after Schumacher, they have one so they all need a lot of faith in Kimi.

Smartie also told us on the official forum her accounts being at the Silverstone and Hockenheim tests: "I’ve been at the last two test sessions and I was lucky enough to get up close to various teams in the garages. And I can say now at both tests, Massa was the more relaxed and at ease driver. He got out there, put the laps in and fed back. Kimi, on the other hand, was not happy. On two occasions the garages were shut completely while they stripped and rebuilt the car. One mechanic commented that things were not going well and the atmosphere was ‘stressful’. There was a real difference in atmosphere from when Massa was in the garage and when Kimi was. You could see and feel it."

Massa may have been smiling yesterday simply for beating Kimi, despite being beaten embarrassingly by Hamilton and a Renault. It’s getting close to when Ferrari will start crowding over one side of the garage and it’s leaning towards Felipe’s. Making sure this doesn’t happen, Kimi will be giving plenty more because he has to and he will continue to work in Jerez testing this week. As the video shows below, there’s a sigh of relief and discontent together perhaps for Kimi (thanks to TaniaS for the video, but I guess we all need to learn Italian). He has our full support as ever! Keep Flying!

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