German Grand Prix: ‘Love conquers all’ for Lewis Hamilton on rollercoaster day at Hockenheim
It was a race that had everything, from prayers on the grid to a local hero throwing away victory and a devout winner celebrating post-race rain of Biblical proportion.
The odds were stacked against Lewis Hamilton at the start but he said that he never gave up believing that he could win, and he did just that, making his own odds of 14 to 1 in a blinding race that was full of drama and heartbreak.
Local boy and pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel seemed to have the win in the bag, until he made an embarrassing, unforced error while comfortably ahead.
After Ferrari had asked his pacey teammate Kimi Raikkonen to vacate the lead as he was on a two-stop strategy in which his tyres were wearing out, and his presence was threatening to harm Vettel’s as well, the two duly switched positions on the 39th lap as the yet-to-pit Hamilton was closing in. Vettel immediately started pulling away again as he had done from the start.
The rain that had long been predicted began to fall on the 44th lap. At first it was light enough that those, among them frontrunner Max Verstappen, who dived into the pits for intermediate rain tyres soon realised they had been premature and switched back to slicks a few laps later. But by the 49th lap the rain had picked up again, between the second and sixth turns.
“It was very difficult to know where the grip was, and when it was suddenly not there, there was nothing you can do,” Raikkonen would later observe. But it was Ferrari’s German rather than their Finn who paid the big price.
By the 51st lap Vettel had opened a lead of nine seconds, but coming into the stadium on the 52nd, with the race apparently in his pocket to swell the world championship lead he had taken with victory at
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Silverstone, he got into a little twitch and suddenly the red car had speared nose-first into a DHL trackside advertising hoarding. Damage was light, but the Ferrari was stuck in the gravel, and the anguished Vettel beat his helmeted head with his hands as he intoned “For f***’s sake! For f***’s sake! Sorry guys. S***!” over the radio to his equally distraught crew.
Hamilton, meanwhile, had started from 14th place after hydraulic problems in qualifying and had run for the first 42 laps on Pirelli’s soft-compound tyre, then pitted from third place to switch to the ultrasofts on which his rivals had started.
Vettel stalked away, understandably kicking angrily at the gravel and cursing himself, and Raikkonen and Bottas dived into the pits as the safety car was deployed to remove the stricken Ferrari. Once again, Mercedes’ strategy was unclear, as they instructed Hamilton to pit too but confusion reigned as he reported that Raikkonen was coming in, and eventually he elected to stay out.
“It was so confusing really,” Hamilton said. “I came round and saw Kimi start turning in, and I was told, ‘box, box, box!’. I said that Kimi was pitting they said stay out, so then I started turning on to the grass when suddenly they said, in, in, in, in, in, in, in!’ But sometimes you take the chance by doing the opposite, so in the end I decided to stay out and it turned out to be the right thing. But it was so intense. They were panicking on the pit wall, and I was probably the only calm one. It was cool to see how much they care, and to see them on edge of their seats.”
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That meant that when racing resumed on the 58th of the 67 laps, Hamilton had track position over Raikkonen, Bottas and Verstappen, all of whom had closed up behind the safety car. They were now all on the same ultrasoft rubber, but Hamilton’s was 16 laps older. It was a gamble to the finish.
“Conditions were perfect when it rained, because I knew I could have a good position, but you could never know what might happened after the safety car went in, with the guys behind me on new tyres. When I woke up this morning I was hopeful, and you’ve got to have that belief that it’s possible. I said on the grid that I was going to catch those guys. That was my goal.
“I did that long stint and I had to pit when I did because the tyres were dead even though we knew that the rain was coming in the next few laps. So I was I was on a different tyre strategy to the guys ahead. As soon as I started to pit [the second time], I knew that was where the opportunity was going to come. At times in the rain the difference to others was three seconds a lap, so I knew I was going to catch them and be in the mix. But the rain got trickier and trickier and it was so hard out there. Ultrasoft is the better tyre and it’s easier to get temperatures in cold conditions. When I was behind the safety car we didn’t know whether there was more rain to come, and the guys behind had those new tyres, so I was just grateful to have track position. And when we were fighting, I just thought, ‘I’ve come all this way, there’s no way I’m going to give it up.’”
Bottas, hungry for his first win of a tough season, was all over him as they battled round the lap, running side by side out of the hairpin and giving team boss Toto Wolff grey hairs as Daimler Benz chairman Dr Dieter Zetsche looked on.
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Hamilton’s defence of his hard-won lead was hard but fair, and he had opened a gap by the end of that lap. Then the team asked Bottas to hold station. Risking a crucial 1-2 would have been crass by that stage.
“After the safety car we were free to race,” Bottas said. “We had a nice battle, but here you need quite a big pace differential to overtake. It would have been very tricky and I could only do it if I would have really pushed. I didn’t get past then so they told me it was too much risk, which I understand. It makes no sense to fight your teammate when we are gathering all the points. So there are no hard feelings on my side. I had already lost the race with the timing of the safety car and a slow pit stop, so things didn’t really go my way today.”
Mercedes, however, scored the 1-2 on their home ground. And regained the lead on both the drivers’ and constructors’ world championships.
Raikkonen was a distant third, Verstappen fourth on a day when Red Bull again lost Daniel Ricciardo to early mechanical failure.
After some warm moments with his team-mate, a leap on to the pit wall to acknowledge his fans, and some quiet moments of emotional refection in the green room, Hamilton was left to savour a superb drive.
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“It’s definitely too early ever to really feel the title slipping away,” he said, “but it never feels good when you face adversity. But the longer you endure it, the stronger you grow. I felt before the race, ‘Jeez, this is one steep hill for us,’ but you keep believing, giving everything you’ve got, because things will come off. Today was one of the most unbelievable days. I prayed as I always do before the race, and my prayers were really answered. That freaked me out little bit more than normal and to see the Biblical storm afterwards.
“There was a lot of negativity before the race. You never hear the fans in England booing anyone, but when I came here there was a lot of booing, and the weird thing is I was really happy about it, because I kept seeing individuality with a couple of British flags in seas of red, and people from Mexico, England and Africa in Hamilton shirts, standing amongst the red. So it was very positive for me. That’s why I said at end, on the slow-down lap, love conquers all.
“I really feel like the rain coming down was washing away the negativity on a glorious day.”
