Formula One news

The first half of the 67-lap German Grand Prix was a walk in the park for pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton as he quickly established a comfortable lead over Felipe Massa. However, the deployment of the safety car on lap 36, combined with some strange decision making, made Hamilton’s eighth career win rather more dramatic than McLaren would have thought. With Nelson Piquet finishing second in the Renault, it is a day to remember at Hockenheimring.

Hamilton made a solid start from the pole position and was able to pull a ten second advantage in the first 15 laps from Massa who was unable to put together consistent laps in his Ferrari. The first round of pitstops came and went and nothing really changed with Hamilton backing off by a second a lap at the front to keep the gap to Massa consistent.

Timo Glock had made best use of a long first stint before pitting and ran in eighth position when the right rear suspension failed on his TF108 exiting the fast final turn. The Toyota spun and made very heavy contact with the inside retaining wall on the pit straight before rebounding across the circuit and coming to rest on the grass. As ever, Glock seems to have little luck, but thankfully he seems not to have sustained any serious injury.

With the safety car deployed and the pit lane opened on lap 38, nearly everyone headed to the pits for a second round of pit stops.

Hamilton however did not pit and at the restart, had a clear aim of extending his advantage over Massa to more than 20 seconds, the time needed for his second and final stop.

The McLaren driver pushed hard but could however only get the gap out to 15 seconds before pitting and exited the pits behind team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, Massa and Piquet.

Kovalainen did not make much of an issue letting Hamilton ahead and soon Hamilton was right on the back of Massa’s Ferrari. Heading to the hairpin on lap 57, Massa did not protect the inside line and Hamilton was through. The procedure was repeated just three laps later on Piquet and the race victory was there for Hamilton.

The McLaren Mercedes, in the hands of Hamilton, was the class of the field today in Germany and even an error on strategy did not stop Hamilton from taking his eighth career victory.

Piquet has been under pressure to perform at Renault this year and after qualifying 17th and then running 18th in the early stages, it seemed that there would be little he could do from that position. However, using a one stop strategy compared to the two of every other runner - plus the timing of the safety car - gave him a chance to shine.