F1 Talk: A Thriller in Hockenheim as Chaos Errupts

What a Grand Prix! Incredible drama, remarkable scenes, seriously unpredictable and while there was heartbreak for some, there was elation for others.

Max Verstappen was victorious with Sebastian Vettel taking second place having started at the back but the happiest driver of all has to be Daniil Kvyat who gave Toro Rosso their first podium since Monza 2008 just hours after becoming a father.

It was Honda’s first double podium since 1992 and the first time a rain-affected race has not been won be Lewis Hamilton for five years (Hungary 2014). 

Lance Stroll lead the race at one point and took an amazing 4th place, Carlos Sainz was in the gravel at one point but recovered to 5th and Williams scored a point! That sentence alone shows what a mad race it was and it will go down as a classic.

In terms of pure entertainment, it was probably the most entertaining race in the turbo-hybrid era.

Qualifying was eventful enough to say the least.

Ferrari looked set to at least take pole position, if not lock out the front row as they did in Bahrain. Vettel topped FP1 whilst Leclerc was fastest in FP2 and FP3. They had the advantage over Mercedes and just had to execute a solid qualifying to beat the Silver Arrows. It didn’t happen.

Vettel did not even get to do a flying lap as a turbo problem prevented him from setting a laptime. Then, Leclerc was unable to go out in Q3 due to a fuel system issue. Reliability is excellent across the field nowadays after the early troubles for some teams this year but Ferrari are still showing a clear weakness in this area.

They might have the most powerful engine, but are still some way behind Mercedes in terms of reliability. It is ten times more irritating for them because they knew that they had the pace to put two cars at the head of the field. If it happened at France for example, it would not have hurt as much because they knew they did not have the ultimate pace.

I have been critical towards driver performance and it is only fair to criticise Ferrari. It is becoming unacceptable and it must be so hard to be upbeat and confident internally at Ferrari, nevermind if you are a Ferrari fan. 

Ferrari used to be the benchmark in terms of the operation, the strategy, executing when it mattered (talking about the years 2010-2015) but they have made so many mistakes, so many poor strategy decisions in a race, too many reliability issues when they are in race winning or championship contention, it has been a disaster in these areas.

The 2019 car has not delivered as expected but they still could and should have won at least four Grand Prix this year but have not due to the inadequacies in the areas just mentioned.

Hamilton took pole position with a very good lap, perhaps underrated by many. The 5-time world champion was actually ill on Saturday morning (and throughout the weekend) and the team were even thinking of putting their reserve driver, Esteban Ocon, in the car; they even prepared the pedal settings and seat for Ocon just in case.

To outqualify your teammate 0.368 is impressive on a 2.84 miles circuit, nevermind when you are under the weather and not feeling 100%.

The midfield was seriously mixed up all weekend, throughout practice and then into qualifying and  of course the race.

0.033 was the difference between 8th to 13th in Q2, Nico Hulkenberg to Daniel Ricciardo and there were eight different teams in Q3. Something that has not happened for a very long time. It was incredibly close, the tightest the midfield has been all year and that is saying something when the gaps tend to diverge and one or two teams break away form the rest of the pack.

The drama had only just begun with qualifying setting everything up for a great race. A heavy downpour of rain during the Porsche Supercup race, around three hours before the start of the F1 race, only heightened the excitement pre-race and the rain was persistent for the rest of the afternoon.

Michael Masi (F1 race director) elected to do four formation laps before opting to allow the drivers to do a standing start. A fair call, I think they could have done a standing start straight away with a normal starting procedure, but we only lost three laps of racing so it was not too bad.

Plus, Masi got the safety car and virtual safety car calls absolutely spot on in my opinion. The marshals did a brilliant job to clear the cars very quickly so not too many racing laps were lost despite the four safety cars, so well done to the marshals and Masi because the safety cars could have felt very annoying to the viewer, but they were short periods and there was so much going on anyway.

The left hand-side of the grid (from the camera) all got poor starts but both Red Bulls had atrocious launches, simply wheel-spinning their cars like they were on ice.

Mercedes were gifted an easy 1-2 with Kimi Raikkonen splitting them from Verstappen. Pierre Gasly went backwards after qualifying very well in 4th, showing an extreme deficit in pace compared to Verstappen and running wide at crucial moments of the Grand Prix.

Verstappen was on the back of Valtteri Bottas in no time but was stuck behind the Finn as his front tyres degraded pretty badly in the turbulent air. Both the intermediate and wet tyres wore out almost instantly, yes Pirelli have had very little testing with these tyre compounds but it was not a good showing of their non-dry tyre compounds.

Anyway, the move from intermediates to slicks was triggered by Kevin Magnussen and most of the field followed. It turned out to be the wrong choice as rain began to fall again, just hard enough to make the track very treacherous. 

Verstappen spun on cold, medium tyres complaining that Red Bull should have put him on the soft compound. Then, Leclerc’s race ended in a flash as he took to the run-off at the penultimate corner for a third time, this time he ended up in the wall.

You would have thought he would have learnt from his previous errors, but he just lost the rear and the drag strip run-off area was like ice. Coupled with slick tyres on standing water, you are a passenger and it is so hard to get back under control.

A lap later, Hamilton had a moment of his own under safety car conditions. He was crawling around, clearly not enough, and glanced the barrier breaking his front wing. A very unusual error from Hamilton, having won the last 10 rain affected races and is usually the benchmark in wet conditions.

That was just the start of what would be a catastrophe for Mercedes, who were celebrating 125 years of motorsport and their 200th F1 race. The team did not know Hamilton was coming in, they were completely confused. Chaos erupted, madness unravelled.

They didn’t know they had to change the front wing, the front wing fitting itself caused problems and they originally put soft tyres on before eventually putting on the intermediate tyres. In total it took 50 seconds, about the same amount of time a pitstop 125 years ago would take!

The race was not over though for Hamilton, he somehow emerged in 5th place albeit with a five second time penalty to serve for going around the wrong side of the bollard in the entry to the pitlane. You may ask why he did not get this penalty last year?

This year, the ‘going to the right hand side of the bollard’ rule was in the race director’s notes, last year it was not.

Leclerc was one of several drivers who went off at the penultimate corner, some getting away with it, some not. Kimi Raikkonen, Hamilton, Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg to name a few all had a moment there. Not since Brazil 2003 at the exit of the ‘Senna S’ have I seen so many cars go off at the same part of the track in Formula One. 

Following the Leclerc off and Hamilton’s pitstop from the 1950s, Verstappen led the race from Bottas with Hulkenberg in third and Albon in fourth. Hulkenberg was the next victim and it was absolutely gutting to see a potential podium slip away. The German has the most F1 starts without a podium (167) and when a massive result was on the cards, just like Leclerc a small mistake was punished harshly and he will be seriously kicking himself for the rest of the week.

Red Bull opted to pit again for new intermediates, Verstappen had built up a big enough gap to come in and do a pitstop under safety car conditions to retain the lead. Apart from going onto the medium tyres earlier in the race, Red Bull got the strategy almost perfectly.

The crucial point of the race was lap 46. Just before the restart, Racing Point took a bold decision by putting Stroll onto the slick tyres and he caught up to the back of the safety car queue and knew that if he could keep the temperature in the tyres, he would shoot up the order whilst the rest of the field pitted under green flag conditions.

Kvyat pitted on the same lap as the safety car coming and benefitted a lot too, everyone else pitted a lap or two too late and it proved costly for some.

Most of the field followed once they saw Stroll lighting up the timing screens but Hamilton, Raikkonen, Antonio Giovinazzi and Romain Grosjean waited for another lap. Hamilton not only was given a poor strategy but he had to serve his five second time penalty. Ideally he would have served it earlier but you are not allowed to serve a penalty under safety car conditions.

This meant, with the field bunched up from the latest safety car, he dropped to the back of the field due to drivers undercutting him and the penalty which had to be taken then, but did not came at the worst time possible.

What was most surprising was the lack of pace from the Mercedes on the slicks in the final 18 laps of the Grand Prix. It was like Hamilton gave up quite frankly (despite his ‘never give up’ motto) as I at least thought he would claw back up the field into a decent points paying position. It never happened.

Bottas was equally as bad. He should have been able to breeze by Stroll but he was so on the edge that he went millimetres wide at turn one, spun his car and went into the tyre barrier. The spin had remarkable similarities to the exact same spin Hamilton had just a few laps before, Hamilton got away with it but Bottas didn’t.

A huge chance of eating into Hamilton’s championship deficit was missed by the Finn and with pressure increasing on the Finn, this was the last thing he needed as any sort of championship challenge is slowly but surely unravelling.

With Mercedes suffering from one of their worst races in recent history, Vettel began his charge. His pace was superior to the rest of the field and he overtook cars one by one, even without the best strategy. It just showed the pace that Ferrari had and that they would have been favourites had they not messed up qualifying and had it been a normal, dry race.

Meanwhile, Verstappen coasting to victory. An exemplary drive, not perfect but very little mistakes and beautifully controlled once up front and Red Bull were on top of their strategy once again. While there were many mistakes, there were many standout performances. 

I am so happy for Kvyat. He has been through a lot mentally, not many drivers have been demoted from a top team then demoted from F1 altogether before coming back and performing well throughout the season and executed a solid race when a golden opportunity arrived.

Kvyat was one of just a few drivers not to make a mistake all race (or at least not go off the track) and even though he was not up there all race, a strategy gamble gave him a deserved podium and he kept his head in the latter stages of the Grand Prix.

Teammate Albon was impressive too and as mentioned in the Driver Ratings article, he was one of the drivers who could have been in Kvyat’s position had he gambled with dry tyres at the penultimate safety car restart.

With both Alfa Romeo drivers receiving 30-second time penalties for ‘driving aids’ prior to the start of the race, Hamilton was classified ninth and Robert Kubica took his first point since returning to F1 and funnily enough he will likely finish ahead of George Russell in the championship even though he has been very poor compared to Russell for much of the first half of the season.

The 2019 German GP may be the last F1 race in Germany for the foreseeable future, but what a race it was. Sensational would be an understatement and it is now three great races in a row that F1 has served up after so many knee-jerk reactions from fans following the French GP last month.

Are you Hungary for more? I am