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| Hockenheimring (I miss the forest but still a classic track) (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
Firstly a HUGE apology
for failing (again…slinks off in shame) to post any form of qualifying blog. In
my defence, it was not a good weekend. The husband was ill with some kind of
Man Tummy Bug which I did show a degree of sympathy towards until he mentioned that
he might need to retire to bed in the afternoon. Obviously that got vetoed but
our weekend was a bit all over the shop. And now the 5 year old is on School
Holidays for Six Weeks meaning I have even less free time than normal (ie. we
are now talking negative terms) to do things like blogging! So far just to cope
with the first morning of the school holidays, I have had a steak for lunch and
two of the strongest possible coffees. I realise that makes me sound
practically French.
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| The most annoying man on TV? |
Currently I’m trying to
block out the ear-shattering tones of Mister Maker (possibly The Most Annoying
Man on the Planet) and the sound of lots of frenzied scissor cutting from
downstairs. God, its going to be a long six weeks. The 1 year old is currently
asleep so this is one tiny window of opportunity to speed-type about the German
GP.
Its safe to say this blog
won’t be so much a labour of love but a race against time though more of the
Maldonaldo car crash variety than a serene Alain Prost canter through the race.
No ‘live’ Beeb coverage
as over at the Beeb they are preparing for the Very Important Olympics so
unhelpfully, given severe child-imposed time constraints, I had to wade through
Sky’s epic coverage. Well that’s not really true. Huge swathes of chat,
analysis and waffle were fast-forwarded through but I have at least watched the
race. Huzzah.
In the interests of time
and my need for the occasional few snatched hours of sleep, I’ll rattle through
qualifying as follows:
1.
Alonso
2.
Vettel
3.
Webber (demoted 5 places after gearbox change)
4.
Schumacher
5.
Hulkenberg
6.
Maldonaldo
7.
Button
8.
Hamilton
9.
Di Resta
10.
Raikkonen
Blimey that was easy. So
onto Sunday’s extravaganza show! We had a quick montage of Martin Brundle’s
best gridwalk bits (not sure why they randomly put this together for the German
GP) where we were able to relive Martin’s attempted interview with that ol’
charmer, Owen Wilson, all the way back in Malaysia. No wonder Kate Hudson ran
for the hills although I’m keeping a close eye on any Yoko antics from her now
she has hooked up with the lead singer from My Favourite Band in the World. The
Random Celebrity at a Race quotient hasn’t been quite as stellar this year at
the F1 races. I’m praying that the cast of Dallas might rock up to the Austin
Grand Prix. Still just as long as Victoria Beckham doesn’t show up doing her
wannabe Anna Wintour impression in the paddock. *Shudder*
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| How things might have unfolded had Bernie popped along to the race |
Even Bernie wasn’t
gracing Hockenheim with his presence this weekend. A fact which I am sure was
entirely unconnected with the recent law case where a business associate of
Bernie’s got jailed for 8½ years for various
misdemeanours like…er…taking £28m in bribes from Bernie. Thoughtfully, Bernie
didn’t want to be a distraction at the race. I guess that the dramatic arrest
of the F1 supremo in the pitlane 20 minutes before the race could potentially
have been a distraction to be fair. Still (chooses words carefully), none of us
know the full facts of the matter and it would be unwise to comment or
speculate further.
It was time for #MartinsGridWalk
(not a pointless montage but the real one). Both Rosberg and Grosjean seemed
surprised (but not overly bothered!) to be so far back on the grid. Er, surely
the classifications post-qualifying would have revealed all.
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| The Engine Map Controversy (frighteningly this is document 45 - bloody lawyers hey!) |
The big pitlane news was
that Red Bull had escaped punishment for using an ‘engine map’ [goes off to google what an engine map is] following
an investigation (of which I had been previously unaware!). Basically they are altering the engine
mapping to change the torque (nope, not got a clue!) output of the engine which
in some way is helping the cars aerodynamically. Apparently "while the stewards do not accept all the arguments
of the team, they however conclude that as the regulation is written the map
presented does not breach article 5.5.3 of the technical regulations".
This is lawyer speak for ‘Red Bull are doing something a bit sneaky outside the
spirit of the rules but we can’t actually stop them on a strict interpretation
of the wording’. Naughty Red Bull. Again. Still, lets hope their drivers both
drive cleanly and fairly to avoid further controversy. Especially Vettel.
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| The lovely Tanja from German TV |
Brundle
conveniently ran into Ross Brawn and asked him about the stewards’ decision and
Ross, in his usual lugubrious way, said he didn’t know enough of the facts but
was sure that wouldn’t be an end to the matter. I bet it won’t. Martin then had
a brief encounter with the lovely Tanja from German TV. Ah now there is a
chemistry that DC and Eddie could only dream of on the pitlane! Then time for
the German National Anthem which isn’t really worthy of note except for the
fact that it was being sung by someone who appeared to be wearing a white and
black splattered suit made of tinfoil. Marvellous. I just love Germany.
Time For
the Start and Go Go Go...! An awesome start from Alonso to leave Vettel
trailing in his wake with Schuey all over the back of his car. By lap 2 it
appeared that all the cars were driving through bits of carbon fibre and
general car debris with no apparent clue where it came from. Oh, and it was
from Felipe Massa’s car. Yup, he would have made my top five list of suspects!
Awaited imminent appearance of the Safety Car but no, the stewards and
officials thought it would be fun to spice things up and see who came out
unscathed from the carbon fibre lottery! The unlucky ones were Massa (actually
it was all his fault so fair do’s), Grosjean and Senna.
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| Note to Lewis - this is what a really bad puncture looks like (poor Nige) |
It looked
like Hamilton already had a left rear puncture and he radioed in to say he
should retire. Well, Lewis, maybe when you’re getting a gazillion pounds a
week, you should try and bring the car into the pits to see if you can
continue. I think someone relayed that exact message to him (or reminded him
that Scary Ron D was watching) as he came into the pits and then shock horror
was in fact able to continue.
Paul di
Resta and Kimi meanwhile had a ferocious battle going on for 8th
place and not too surprisingly, Kimi ‘balls of steel’ Raikkonen eventually pulled
off a fierce overtaking move on Di Resta. Somehow, Button had already
manoeuvred his way up into 4th place by lap 8 after passing The
Hulk. This was a bit more like the Jenson of old, ie. the wily, smooth racer of
yesteryear as opposed to the pretty diabonical Jenson of 2012. Hamilton,
meanwhile, was a whopping 18 seconds behind Narain Karthikeyan. It doesn’t get
much worse than that really.
By lap 11,
Button had overtaken Schuey for P3. The Mercedes just seems to lack raw speed
which is an odd thing to say about a ‘Silver Arrow’. It’s the 3rd
year of a three year project, guys. Not. Good. Enough.
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| The Hulk never features much so here he is! (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
The first
round of pitstops kicked off starting with Di Resta, then in rapid succession,
in whizzed Rosberg, The Hulk, Webber, Maldonaldo but the big winner was Kimi
who leapfrogged up a couple of places. Schuey emerged from his pitstop right
into the path of the unsuspecting Hulk and was clearly steaming at this turn of
events – eventually he pulled off a brilliant move to overtake the Hulk and to
add insult to injury, Kimi took full advantage and sneaked past as well. Next
to be gobbled up by Schuey was Daniel Ricciardo until the Very Fast but Twitchy
Lotus managed to pass Schumacher on lap 21.
By this
stage all the front runners had pitted with little incident (even at the
McLaren garage) and the order of play was shaking out as follows: 1. Alonso, 2.
Vettel, 3. Button, 4. Kimi, 5. MSC and 6. The Hulk. And we had the usual upbeat
‘deckchairs on the Titanic’ messages from McLaren. First to Jenson, saying they
were racing to win (that must have amused Ferrari who had The Best Driver
currently in F1 leading the race) and a very calm therapist type person telling
Hamilton they still might be able to make it work. Good luck with that one
guys.
In all
fairness, Button was looking right on the pace so clearly the much needed
upgrades were working out well. Vettel was closing on Alonso which allowed
Button in turn to make inroads into the gap from P2 to P3. By the half-way
point, the top 5 order was unchanged from the first lot of pitstops which
doesn’t mean it was the most boring race in the world but my eyelids may have
closed on more than one occasion.
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| Blue flags (who knows when they apply!) |
All of a
sudden it emerged that Lewis Hamilton (in 18th place) was right
behind Vettel (in 2nd place) with Button closing up on them both.
Cue a message on the radio to remind Hamilton not to hold up Jenson. There then
followed an explanation of the unlapping and blue flag rules by Martin Brundle
which were so idiotic and convoluted that I had to rewind what he said about 4
times. In a nutshell, if Lewis wanted to unlap himself that was fine (so therefore
he could ‘race’ Vettel and Alonso) BUT if the race leader (ie. Alonso) was
behind him, then he could technically get ‘blue flagged’, ie. instructed to let
Alonso go past.
Anyway
those daft rules weren’t going to trouble Lewis who probably just thought ‘I’m
in a car, there is a car ahead of me and I want to overtake it’. So that’s what
exactly he did on lap 36 when he overtook Vettel (and unlapped himself). That
made Vettel very cross and there was lots of hand waving. Oh stop sulking
Seb…you would have done the same.
The next
lot of pitstops were underway with Kimi and Schuey coming in early doors. Lewis
meanwhile was harrying Alonso like a demon and there were lots of demented
sounded Italian messages over the radio from Ferrari. I heard a rumour that
McLaren have employed an Italian translator to tell them what’s going on at
Ferrari. Lets hope, the translator wasn’t born anywhere near Maranello though
that’d be a marvellous twist. There was some temporary big excitement at seeing
some blue flags finally but they were only for Pic who was presumably somewhere
near the back being troublesome.
Just as the
Wise and Learned Martin Brundle predicted, in came in Button on lap 40 for his
final pitstop. Then there was a Race Defining Moment on lap 41 when both Alonso
and Vettel came into the pits at the same time and as they rejoine the track,
Jenson Button was side by side with the Red Bull and made his move stick to move
up into 2nd place. Button was absolutely flying and gradually
starting eating into Alonso’s times. With still 20 laps to go, he had brought
the gap down to under a second. In unrelated news, Kobayashi had forced his way
up to 6th place and was having a cracking race.
By lap 50,
all 24 cars were still running. Not a single retirement although Grosjean gave it
a good stab with a massive detour into the gravel. The 5 year old was most
unimpressed to see Schumacher dart into the pits on lap 53. All most confusing
but presumably 5th place is nowhere in Schuey’s world so he thought
he might as well go for broke on some faster tyres. With ten laps to go, there
was only 0.6 seconds between Alonso and Button. We were all set for a Mega Grandstand
Finish although the one guy you really wouldn’t want to have to pass to a win a
race was Fernando. Damn and blast.
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| This is where Lewis should stick his memories of Hockenheim 2012 (blame Sky commentary not me!) |
Oooooh our
first retirement and it was … pray silence please … Lewis Hamilton. Still he
had been threatening to retire since almost the start. As Crofty put it, time
for Lewis to consign this race to the dustbin of memory (where it can languish
alongside most of Narain’s and Massa’s races and Fisichella, the Ferrari Era).
Suddenly in
a very unwelcome development, Vettel was catching Button and on the penultimate
lap, he passed Button for second place. But wait, he overtook him while OFF THE
TRACK. Audacious or outrageous? The way I see it is if there had been a wall
there instead of a run off zone, then Button would have finished that race in 2nd
place. End of. Or another way of looking at the incident is if Schumacher had
executed such a move, David Coulthard would have imploded in self-righteous indignation.
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| Our race winner, Fernando Alonso. This man is on fire (not literally). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
So are are the
results from the German Grand Prix 2012:
1.
Alonso – His third race win of the season and
an utterly dominant drive from start to finish. He is the man to beat this
season.
2. Vettel – Engine maps, illegal overtaking
moves, childish strops over perfectly acceptable overtaking manoeuvres. I’m
kind of going off Seb.*
3.
Button – Hooray, finally a return to form. Hopefully
Jenson has got his mojo back.
4.
Kimi – A very creditable 4th place.
5.
Kobayashi – Up 8 places from his grid
position. Great job by Kamui and Sauber.
6.
Perez – Slightly overshadowed by his team-mate
but Team Sauber will be delighted with the weekend.
*Vettel
demoted to 5th after 20 second drive through penalty. Epic fail.
Just one
week’s rest until the fun and games at the hot and twisty Hungaroring. I have a
massively soft spot for the Hungarian Grand Prix which has thrown up at least 3 of
my all time favourite races. Should be an extra lively affair after the German GP
which ended off with Vettel calling Hamilton “a bit stupid”, Hamilton responding
by saying of Vettel “it shows his maturity”, lots of unpredictable contract
negotiations going on (see Schumacher, M and Hamilton, L) and some frantic
re-writing of the rule book to cover those naughty Red Bull engine maps. The F1
season is hotting up nicely. Just like the English summer. Finally!
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