TEEETHERINGTON1 AUGUST 2019 AUTOSPORT.COM 19GERMAN GP RACE CENTRELewis Hamilton didn’t head into qualifying for the German
Grand Prix in an especially optimistic frame of mind. The
Ferraris were faster over a lap, particularly on the quickest
soft Pirelli compound, and he looked to have a fight on his
hands even to be sure of third place given the pace of Max
Verstappen’s Red Bull. To make matters worse, he felt under
the weather – he described it as a “sore throat” – to the
point where Mercedes had put reserve driver Esteban
Ocon on standby in the morning just in case Hamilton
reacted badly to running in Saturday’s practice session.
Hamilton’s 87th pole position started to become a little
less unlikely early in Q1 when a problem manifested itself
with Sebastian Vettel’s intercooler fresh out of the pits.
Vettel crawled back round
and disappeared into
the garage, consigned
to starting at the back.
But that still left Charles
Leclerc, who had looked
the quicker of the Ferrari
drivers before qualifying.
Unfortunately, the second
Ferrari only lasted until the
fuel-pump control module
gave out ahead of Q3.
Even this didn’t leave Hamilton with an entirely open goal,
as he still had to do the lap time. He did so on his first run,
banging in a time of 1m11.767s. The lap wasn’t perfect, with
a wobble at Turn 8 costing him, but on his second attempt
he was behind from the moment he tried to use the kerb on
the left of the track on the entry to the fast first corner and
unsettled the car. That, combined with running a little too
wide at the Turn 6 hairpin, meant Hamilton was vulnerable.
But with Verstappen, whose lap was a little scruff y in
places, only able to make a small improvement and the
other Mercedes driver, Valtteri Bottas, struggling in the
big braking zones, Hamilton was in the clear.
Pierre Gasly’s final lap was only 0.031s slower than
Verstappen’s but was deleted thanks to exceeding track
limits at the final corner, which only gave him a very marginal
time gain, if at all. Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen led the
midfield and almost did enough to jump Gasly’s fallback
time, with Romain Grosjean’s Australian GP-spec Haas sixth.“MERCEDES HAD
PUT RESERVE
DRIVER OCON
ON STANDBY IN
THE MORNING
JUST IN CASE”QUALIFYING
after being given the latest of calls by the pitwall.
At that point, Hamilton was 4.8s clear of Bottas, who had
Verstappen pressuring him. Once the VSC cleared, Hamilton
returned to pulling away. From the end of lap 16 to the end of lap
25 he was again 0.38s per lap quicker than Bottas. Verstappen had
to be satisfied with holding station behind Bottas, at one stage
suffering a big rear end snap at the Turn 6 hairpin that cost him time.
With Hamilton in the clear, Red Bull decided to force the issue in
the battle with Bottas. Verstappen pitted at the end of lap 25 to take
on slick mediums, a move replicated a lap later by Bottas. Verstappen
was furious at being put on medium Pirellis rather than the more
obvious softs and squandered his chance of jumping Bottas when he
spun in the middle of the Turn 14/15 left-right. He gathered it up quickly,
so was back on Bottas’s tail when the Mercedes emerged from the pits.
But what followed briefly threatened to turn the race on its head
thanks to Leclerc’s earlier stop.
PHASE 3 LECLERC IN CONTENTION
Leclerc had used his fresh intermediates to good effect. In his first
eight complete laps of that stint he was the fastest driver on circuit
by a second per lap to close to just three seconds behind Verstappen.
He ran two laps longer than Verstappen and a lap further than Bottas
to jump both, pitting at the end of lap 27 for softs. He was helped by
the VSC being activated while he was in the pitlane before he pulled
into the pitbox, reducing the time lost.
The VSC was deployed because Lando Norris’s McLaren had ground to
a halt when he lost power shortly after pitting from 13th place, combined
with several other spinners. This looked helpful for Hamilton, who came
in at the end of lap 28 for softs, but the green flag was thrown just as the
Mercedes entered the speed-limit controlled part of the pitlane. Trouble
getting the front-right tyre off cost Hamilton another 2-3s, allowing
Leclerc to gain more time. While he was never going to jump Hamilton,
he would have been closer than his unpromising starting position
would have suggested and the leader would have been in sight.
But on softs that had lost temperature under the VSC, the rear end
got away from Leclerc as he tiptoed into the penultimate corner. He
attempted to correct with two armfuls of opposite lock, but once onto
the slicked-up surface of the start of Hockenheim’s drag strip that is
used as the runoff, he then understeered into the gravel and then the wall.
After a fruitless attempt to dig himself out, he had a lengthy swear over
the radio, berated himself, apologised to the team then denounced the
ultra low-grip runoff as “dangerous” before climbing out of the car.