P Windsor: German GP ***Spoiler***

Many observers were very quick to criticize McLaren when they failed to call in Lewis under Safety Car conditions at Hockenheim. In reality, the issue was not clear-cut. At that precise moment there was no right or wrong, no “mistake” to be made. There was only a “preferred option”. This is because nothing in F1 is etched in stone. There are always variables…

At Hockenheim, once Timo Glock had hit the wall, these were the issues that occupied the minds of those on the pit wall for McLaren:

1) Lewis was leading the race easily. He had the pace, the grip and the balance.
2) Multi-car pit stops are always risky in the sense that it is easy to be held up in the pit lane behind in-coming or out-going cars. Just because Lewis was leading the race it didn’t mean that he was going to be first into the pit lane: lapped cars could have come in before him and held him up – as a Red Bull subsequently held up Heikki Kovalainen.
3) Stacked pit stops are not good from a team point of view. Ferrari stacked Kimi behind Felipe…and effectively ruined Kimi’s race. Obviously Heikki would have stacked behind Lewis. In that case, Heikki, too, would have been out of it.
4) McLaren were actually reasonably happy when they were the “last” team in the pit lane – as they were at the start of the year. Now that they have been moved to the middle of the pit lane it makes congested pit stops – not to mention stacked pit stops – all the more dangerous. For Ferrari, first in the pit lane, the risks were much less obvious.
5) Safety Cars usually stay out for two laps or three. This one lasted for five and therefore gave everyone time to re-gain track position. It is impossible to know this sort of thing in advance.
6) McLaren had won the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix by not bringing Kimi in under Safety Car conditions and by allowing him to regain his lead on a clear track. McLaren later revealed that that piece of “strategy” had been a mistake but nevertheless it became lodged in the mind as something to remember: show the quickest car-driver in the race a panorama of clear track and there’s no limiting the margin he can expand.
7) Lewis’s last stint would be on new Bridgestone options; Massa had switched to options in his first stop and by McLaren’s stats would have to go back to the harder prime for the last, long stint. This would magnify Lewis’s chances.


I guess the only really surprising thing at Hockenheim was that all this sort of analysis was not fully discussed in advance. We know it wasn’t because Lewis Hamilton revealed after the race that he didn’t really understand the logic of the decision and of course never really had time to give the team any input. Given the number of people who work at teams like McLaren and Ferrari, I have always assumed that every conceivable “event” is discussed and rehearsed in advance. Of course the unexpected can always come out to bite you; between 15-20 good racing brains, however, it should be possible to come up with the 50 or so most likely racing scenarios – and then to agree on what should happen next. It’s not vital that the driver always knows exactly what’s going on…but it helps…especially if that driver is as intelligent as Lewis Hamilton. This, obviously, did not happen: a decision was taken on the pit wall by Phil Prew, Lewis’s race engineer – and Phil took that decision in the heat of the moment, given the information at his disposal. As such, he did his job to perfection. There is no right or wrong in this situation. There is just a decision to be made, based on the options and the information (like Massa’s tyre choice) to hand.

Of course the motor racing world (excluding Ferrari) should be very glad that Phil took the decision he did: from that point onwards, Lewis was fabulous to watch - and to listen to. Last year, for instance, Lewis’s radio transmissions would reflect his demeanor and his workload:

“Blue – gasp! – flag! Blue - gasp, gasp – flag!” he would shout when approaching a slower car. This year, more mature, more experienced, more confident, he talks on the radio as if he is on a mobile phone, chatting to his brother:

“Blueflag. Blueflag,” his voice several tones lower and not a few decibels softer.

Not even the Hockenheim Safety Car situation could unsettle him. Lewis could see on the big TV screens that Felipe and Heikki were stopping and so softly he pressed his radio switch:

“OK guys. I see Felipe stopping. Why are we not stopping?”

“You’re ok Lewis. We’re comfortable. You’re going to have to open a gap. You can do it.”

“Copy. How big’s the gap?”

“About 23 seconds in nine laps.”

“Ah. Ok. If you say so….”


Of course Lewis was superb. He had been superb in the opening phase of the race, from the pole – and he was superb now, at the re-start, with the Nick Heidfelds and the Nelson Piquets offering a buffer to the Massa Ferrari. The MP4/18 had been brilliant from the moment Lewis first drove out of the Hockenheim pit lane at the pre-race test, confirming all the signs that had shown up – when? – at the post-Canada Barcelona test, probably, when Pedro de la Rosa had first tried the new rear diffuser and side flow generators and had found much more grip out of the slow corners in Spain in sector three. There wasn’t any more downforce in the wind tunnel – not in terms of numbers. There was more downforce at the back of the car, however – at the expense of the front. This would hurt Heikki – hurt Heikki’s ability to manage the graining phase of the front tyres – but Lewis, typically, has learned to drive around the problem, to use the improved traction to its maximum and to nurse the front on slow corners by more adept use of the brake pedal and also the steering load. As a result, McLaren could at last compete with Ferrari on the slow corners. Add some small adjustments to the Mercedes engine power curve – more low-rev torque at the expense of the top end – and suddenly Lewis had the car about which he was eulogizing before the British Grand Prix. Heikki used one-lap grip and great sector three speed to take the pole at Silverstone – and at Hockenheim it was a similar story for Lewis. McLaren were comparable with Ferrari in terms of top speed; they were good enough on the quick and medium-speed corners and on the slower corners of sector three they were now at least as good as Ferrari, if not better.

Lewis maximized all these qualities, of course, when the Safety Car returned to the pits. He was brilliant – stunning – to watch but of course even he couldn’t create a 23 second lead; as it was, he gained 14 seconds from Massa in nine laps before stopping for fuel and that new set of Bridgestone options. And again the radio:

“OK Lewis. We can do it. You have to pass Massa.”

“Copy.”

He did, of course – and he did it beautifully, demolishing a six-second gap to Massa (by way of a compliant Heikki, who repaid Lewis for not forcing him to stack by giving him room at turn two) and then looming quickly in the Ferrari mirrors as Felipe began to deal with an imbalance on the Bridgestone primes and a subsequent rear brake instability. Lewis, on the options, was in another world – but the pass would be the thing. The pass could make or break it.

He tucked up behind Felipe on the back straight, Felipe edged to the right, Lewis stayed with him – and then, at the last second for Felipe but still with lots of room to spare for Lewis, the Ferrari pulled left to open up the entry to the hairpin. Lewis didn’t hesitate. Bang. Down the inside..followed by that exquisitely-timed moment when he slowed the car right down, ran it parallel to the Ferrari, said with his body language “OK Felipe. Game over. I’m on the inside, ok? Don’t even think about turning right until I give you permission. Cool? Good. Ok. See ya.”

Lewis, for all that, was not prepared for the next piece of news from Radio McLaren.

“Great job Lewis. Now you need to pass Piquet…”

“I thought Piquet was going to stop, or was a lap behind or something. I wasn’t expecting that,” Lewis would say later.

Piquet was different, of course. As I said in my last column, Lewis treads very carefully whenever he sees the sultry Nelson. He has raced against him for years. He knows him inside out. He doesn’t trust him, however. Doesn’t trust him in the way he trusts Kimi or Felipe or Robert.

On the McLaren pit wall, pulse rates climed. Lewis had the pace. Could he pass Piquet safely?

Ron Dennis broke the radio silence:

“Don’t worry. Lewis is a very professional racing driver. He knows what he’s doing.”

“It’s not Lewis we’re worried about,” said a voice in reply. “It’s Nelson…”

In the end, Nelson actually used his brain – a brain that has recently been undergoing attention from the highly-rated French chiropractor/psychologist Jerome Poupelle. “Work on Nelson’s mental approach,” Flavio Briatore had directed Poupelle. “Give him some confidence.”

And the brain said: “My engineer’s telling me that I can hold off Massa. No point in losing time racing with Lewis. I’ll let him go and look after my tyres.”

Thus it was that Nelson Piquet in a Renault out-raced Felipe Massa’s Ferrari to the finish of the Santander German Grand Prix. Amazing but true. For explanation, look at the difference in performance between the Bridgestone prime and option on both the Renault and the Ferrari. Alonso, who raced the first phase on the option, was reasonably quick before the graining phase. On the prime, late in the race, he was pathetic. Massa, too, found the primes very difficult to handle in the last stint.

For Piquet, life was very different. He had messed up Q1 on Saturday by doing what he has done in virtually every qualifying session at every circuit this year – by locking up the fronts and running wide on a slow corner. Under pressure on his second run, he hit traffic. P17.

Nelson was thus in no position to argue with his engineers when it came to defining fuel strategy for Sunday. Nelson wanted to start on new options and relatively light fuel, giving him some sort of chance of passing the cars around him; his engineers preferred a long first stint on the Bridgestone prime; they would then make a decision about the second half of the race – two stints or one? – based on how things were going.

Well, this is how they went: on exactly the lap on which Nelson needed to stop for fuel and tyres, Timo Glock hit the pit lane wall. Thinking quickly, Nelson’s engineers filled the Renault to the brim and fitted new option tyres. He rejoined the race just as the pit lane closed.

Next thing he knew, virtually everyone in front of him was pulling into the pits. He suddenly found himself third behind Lewis and Nick Heidfeld. Third became second when Lewis stopped. And then Nick stopped….

You have to give Nelson credit for keeping his cool. In the last phase he managed his tyres well on a high fuel load – and he made no mistakes when Massa applied the pressure. And what a difference a day makes! On Saturday night I stayed late in the Renault motorhome, watching the closing holes of the British Open’s third round with Jerome Poupelle. We spoke a lot about how Nelson shouldn’t really have blamed traffic (Vettel) in Q1 because ultimately he should have done a “banker” lap on his first run. It was nearly dark when Nelson himself suddenly appeared, looking morose, and said, “Come on. Let’s go. I need to get out of here…”

Little did he know at that point that his engineers had just given him a key to the podium.

Finally, pay homage praise again to the post-race comments of Felipe Massa. In France he was gracious in victory; in Germany, he seemed genuinely happy to be a part of the first two-Brazilian podium since Spa, 1991, when Ayrton Senna shared the plaudits with Nelson Snr. Felipe is unusual in that he cares about other drivers and people, always speaks what he believes to be the truth and is clear about F1 being a sport and not a self-absorbed way of life.

Lewis, too, was dignified in victory. He was calm on this occasion, and he spoke softly to friends, family, the media and his team – just as he had in the car. He moved as if in slow motion. He had time to spare – and more. Two weeks ago – the wet; now – a chase of a race. Quick on both the primes and the options. Quick on one lap, quick with fuel. Four wins already with eight races still to run. Lewis Hamilton: in the zone.