German Grand Prix 2011 – Race Report

Lewis Hamilton took his second win of the season at the Nurburgring circuit after coming out on top of a tight three-way battle between himself, Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber. The victory came as a result of a combination of an excellent drive from the Brit and an expertly-timed final pit-stop from his McLaren team. Sebastian Vettel finished off the podium for the first time this year on home turf after a disappointing outing.

It was Webber who held all the aces in qualifying, and after securing pole position by just a few hundredths of a second from Hamilton, he appeared to be on course to replicate his victory of two years ago at a circuit at which he has excelled in years gone by. Vettel found himself languishing in third on the grid after Hamilton's barnstorming lap, ahead of the Ferrari pair of Alonso and Felipe Massa and his compatriot Nico Rosberg.

As the race got underway, it was Hamilton who made the best start. He dived up the inside of Webber at the first corner to lead the race, with Alonso adopting a similar approach to slot his scarlet car ahead of Vettel to take third. Rosberg had the edge on Massa and leapt ahead of the Brazilian into fifth, whilst Jenson Button made a poor getaway from seventh on the grid; he ended up an unhappy tenth place by the end of the first lap after he was passed by the fast-starting Michael Schumacher, quickly becoming stuck behind the Renault of Vitaly Petrov after the German found his way past the Russian.

On the second lap, Alonso made an error at turn two which allowed Vettel to re-take his starting position, but it soon became apparent that the championship leader lacked the pace of Hamilton and Webber ahead. As the leading pair slowly crept away, Alonso became an irksome sight in Vettel's mirrors in the DRS zone after the system was enabled. As it was, the Spaniard was unable to make the pass into the chicane at the end of the DRS zone, but managed to get a strong slipstream in the run down to the first corner on lap 8 – the Ferrari driver darted to the inside, braked as late as he dared and the deal was done.

Vettel's situation was compounded by a spin at turn 9 on the same lap, costing him considerable ground to the top three and almost costing him positions to Rosberg and Massa duelling behind. Meanwhile, Webber was catching up Hamilton, and on lap 12 the Red Bull driver took advantage of a minor error at the mistake from his rival which allowed him to sneak into the lead at the final corner. Hamilton however was able to get a supreme exit from that corner, allowing him to re-take the lead into the first corner.

This battle allowed Alonso to draw right on to the tail of Webber, creating a three-way tussle as the first round of pit-stops approached. Webber was first to change his tyres on lap 14, as well as Rosberg who had fallen behind a hard-charging Massa. Two laps later, Hamilton and Alonso both did likewise, but the pair fell just behind Webber who was himself in the process of trying to pass the yet-to-stop Massa. When the Brazilian made his stop at the end of lap 17, Webber crossed the line to lead his first lap of the season.

At first, it looked as if Webber would be able to take a comfortable win as he began to ease away from Hamilton and Alonso behind. However, in doing so he rapidly sapped the life out of his soft compound tyres, allowing the two former champions to close the gap once again. Hamilton was able to close the gap to the Red Bull and wasted little time in retaking the lead of the race with a clever pass at turn 3 just before the second round of pit-stops.

Of the three leaders, Hamilton's pit-stop fell in the middle of his competitors on lap 31, with Webber coming in one lap earlier and Alonso one lap later. A lightning stop from the Ferrari mechanics allowed Alonso to rejoin the track in first, but his former McLaren teammate was in no mood to hold station in second. Hamilton took full advantage of his warmer tyres with a breathtaking move around the outside of Alonso at turn 3, and began to edge away from his arch-rival. Webber conversely seemed incapable of taking the fight to either of the two men ahead.

By the time of the third pit-stops, Hamilton's lead was at one-and-a-half seconds having peaked at around double that, with Webber around three seconds further down the road in third. With the drivers obliged to run the allegedly second-a-lap slower medium tyre, it seemed the logical move to try and do as little time as possible on it in order to drop the least possible time. The McLaren team defied this logic by pitting Hamilton with nine laps remaining, but it transpired to be the right move as Alonso pitted two laps later and failed to take back the lead.

At that point, Hamilton's sixteenth career victory was all but assured, and seven laps later he crossed the chequered flag to take 25 well-deserved points. Alonso held on to second place from Webber, whose even later final pit-stop also failed to pay dividends, marking the fifth consecutive occasion that the Australian has failed to convert a pole position into a win. The second half of the race saw an equally exciting battle develop for fourth place between Vettel and Massa.

The Ferrari number two passed the ailing Vettel earlier in the race, but in the latter stages had his mirrors full of Red Bull RB7. The pair finally pitted with just one lap to go, but a slightly botched pit-stop from the Ferrari mechanics allowed Vettel to snatch fourth place away from Massa, salvaging twelve points from a disappointing afternoon on home soil. On the contrary, Adrian Sutil put in his finest performance of the year at his home race to bag sixth for Force India. His two-stop strategy was the key in finishing ahead of his Mercedes-driving countrymen Rosberg and Schumacher.

Kamui Kobayashi made an excellent recovery at the wheel of the Sauber from a lowly seventeenth on the grid to score two points in ninth place, ahead of Vitaly Petrov who took the final point home for Renault. Eleventh position was all Sergio Perez could manage in the other Sauber after an extremely early first pit-stop was necessitated by an off-road excursion, with twelfth befalling Jaime Alguersauri after a fairly uneventful afternoon.

It was somewhat more eventful for his Toro Rosso teammate Sebastien Buemi though – he started from the back of the grid after being excluded from qualifying because of a fuel irregularity, and picked up a puncture after contact with Nick Heidfeld in the DRS zone early in the race. The veteran German looked to the right to pass the young Swiss as they approached the chicane, but was forced off of the road onto a large hump in the grass which decimated the front-end of the Renault, ending Heidfeld's race prematurely.

Buemi thus could manage no better than fifteenth, some way behind Pastor Maldonado's Williams in fourteenth and Paul Di Resta's Force India in thirteenth, who in turn had his race disrupted by contact with Heidfeld in the opening couple of corners of the race. Next was Heikki Kovalainen in sixteenth for Lotus, who finished ahead of Virgin pairing Timo Glock and Jerome D'Ambrosio, Hispania's Daniel Ricciardo, and finally Karun Chandhok, who was substituting regular driver Jarno Trulli in the second Lotus for one weekend only. Rubens Barrichello and Vitantonio Liuzzi both succumbed to mechanical issues, as did Button who frustratingly has failed to finish twice in a row through absolutely no fault of his own.

For all of his troubles on the race track today, Vettel still has a gigantic lead in the championship of 77 points from Webber, with Hamilton another five behind him after taking back third place from Alonso. This means that if such a situation as what has happened today was replicated over the course of the remaining nine rounds, the German would still take the championship comfortably. Clearly, the destiny of the championship is therefore out of the hands of Vettel's pursuers; all they can do is put in more blistering performances that we've seen this year at Canada, Silverstone and now at the Nurburgring, and hope.