Decisions at the speed of an F1 car
It is wrong to criticise Mercedes’ race engineer for Hamilton receiving conflicting information, but the team had just a few seconds to make that call while the champion drove a 1,000horsepower Grand Prix car in tricky conditions.
The German Grand Prix may prove to be the pivotal race in this year’s World Championship battle. Local hero Sebastian Vettel was in fine form in front of his fans and his brilliant qualifying lap put him in a fantastic position to take victory at a circuit that is 20 minutes from the town where he was born. This was going to be a fairy tale day for Sebastian Vettel, and for the first 51 laps it all seemed to be going to plan. Then the dream turned into a nightmare.
As the drizzle turned into rainfall, the Ferrari driver continued his march at the head of the field. On lap 45 when the rain started to fall, Seb’s lead over teammate Kimi Raikkonen was 3.2 seconds, with Valtteri Bottas another 3 seconds behind and Lewis Hamilton 23.2 seconds behind his title rival. In the next seven laps until his mistake, Vettel had increased that lead by another 6 seconds over the Finns, underlining just how much he was pushing on.
The one thing I wonder, and I doubt they will ever tell us, is whether Ferrari were keeping Vettel informed of Hamilton’s pace and therefore getting him to push on. In that same window of seven laps, Hamilton on fresh, hot ultrasoft tyres, which work much better in the greasy conditions, slashed 11.5 seconds off Seb’s lead.
Pushing just that little bit too hard into the braking zone will come back to haunt Sebastian for a long time. It’s not often that you get the opportunity to win your home race and take a big lead in the World Championship.