Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg cruised to an easy victory ahead of Williams’ Valteri Bottas and Mercedes’ team mate Lewis Hamilton at the German Grand Prix at the Hockenheimring this afternoon.
The race got off to bad start for Felipe Massa who turned in on McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen in turn one and was flipped over while Magnussen dropped to the back; it was 100% Massa’s fault; he should have given the McLaren driver more room. This incident brought out the safety car; which thankfully was only out for two laps with the race resuming on lap 3. The big winners of the start was Jenson Button who jumped from 11th to sixth place while Hamilton jumped from 20th to 14th place. The big loser was Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo who had to go way off track to avoid the first corner incident and found himself drop into the lower midfield when he rejoined the track.
One highlight of the race for me was Ricciardo’s battle with Fernando Alonso for fifth place; a battle that Alonso eventually won with a much faster car at that stage of the race; but it was a real back and forth tussle. Alonso would make the pass but Ricciardo immediately came back at the Spaniard and retook the place. Second highlight was Hamilton closing upto the back of Bottas’ Williams only to held behind by the Williams straight line speed and Hamilton’s soft tyres starting to go off!
Hamilton had a crashi-bashi afternoon clipping Raikkonen as he passed the Finn and also misread Button’s intentions when the Briton went wide and collided with his former team mate. I remember thinking at the time of the incident that the Hamiltonians will be all over the incident blaming Jenson despite Lewis himself acknowledged he misread the situation and accepted the blame.
The second talking point was why the hell did the FIA stewards elect to not dispatch the safety car on lap 50 when Adrian Sutil spun at the final turn leaving his stranded Sauber in the middle of the track. Instead it was covered by waved yellows while the marshals ran across an active track to recover the car. I believe it’s not right to put the marshals lives at risk unnecessarily like that.
Both Mercedes drivers were surprised to not see a safety car with contrasting emotions, Rosberg was happy as it allowed him to cruise home; while Hamilton claimed “I think we know why”; seemingly suggesting that stewards didn’t want to ruin the all-German party as a safety car would have wiped out Rosberg’s lead possibly making him vulnerable to an attack from behind.
You can see Hamilton’s frustration as two weeks prior, the British Grand Prix was red flagged and stopped for an hour to repair a barrier that there was very minimal chance of anyone hitting again. It was definitely a red flag, it was a nasty accident, but the hour long delay was unnecessary. Which makes the decision to cover Sutil’s stranded car with waved yellows even more crazy!
Moving away from the politics of F1, now back to the race itself. It was a solid result for Williams; despite Massa’s unnecessary crash at turn 1, Bottas drove a clinical race to finish where he started in second. This result moves Williams above Ferrari as Kimi Raikkonen’s poor season continues to dog Ferrari’s championship aspirations. I wonder if Sir Frank & Claire are wondering if they made the right decision hiring Massa? the veteran is now 61 points behind relative rookie team mate Bottas.
Rosberg has started to extend his lead over Hamilton in the drivers championship again after he had it cut to just four points at the British Grand Prix when the German retired with gearbox issues as Hamilton took maximum points. The gap after Germany is 14 points, I think Hamilton needs a victory in Hungary next weekend for his own sanity, his frustration was really showing at Hockenheim.
2014 German Grand Prix Results
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1. Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) 1:33:42.914 2. Valteri Bottas (Williams) +20.700 3. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +22.400 4. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) +43.800 5. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) +52.100 |
6. Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) +52.100 7. Nico Hulkenberg (Force India) +63.700 8. Jenson Button (McLaren) +84.200 9. Kevin Magnussen (McLaren) +1 lap 10. Sergio Perez (Force India) +1 lap |