Hamilton managed to free
himself from the gravel, but
then made pit-bollard snafuFor a few sweet moments
Stroll led the race before
Verstappen swept pastMAUGER20 AUTOSPORT.COM 1 AUGUST 2019RACE CENTRE GERMAN GP
PHASE 4 ADVANTAGE VERSTAPPEN
With Leclerc out of the way, the path was seemingly clear for Hamilton.
The safety car was deployed because of Leclerc’s off, only for Hamilton
to find a snake of his own moments after declaring the soft slicks he was
on “risky” thanks to returning rain. While cruising, the rear got away
from Hamilton at the same point as Leclerc and he slid into the wall
just a few metres forward of the stricken Ferrari.
Unlike Leclerc, Hamilton was able to get the Mercedes out of the
gravel and, thanks to front wing damage, he headed straight into the pits.
Crucially, he passed to the left side of the pitlane marker bollard, which
later earned him a five-second penalty. This unexpected visit was not
well timed, as the Mercedes team had just called Bottas in for another
stop two laps after his last following a debate about whether to switch
back to inters or change to softs. Fortunately, by coincidence Bottas saved
himself from queueing behind Hamilton after overruling the team’s call,
saying, “I don’t want to lose track position, so I’m not boxing”.
It took a long time for Hamilton to be sent back out, now on
intermediates after being stationary for almost 50s longer than
a regular stop, meaning he dropped to fifth. The confusion of
Hamilton’s sudden stop was perhaps multiplied by the team not
hearing Hamilton’s message about the front wing clearly as it was
delivered just as race engineer Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington responded
to confirm they had heard him saying he would box.
That left Verstappen in the lead ahead of Hulkenberg, who had
deferred his stop until the safety car and avoided falling into the slick
trap that led to Verstappen and Bottas having to make additional stops
to return to intermediates. He had Bottas and Albon behind him, with
Hamilton ahead of the sixth-placed McLaren of Carlos Sainz Jr –
who had earlier looked to be out of the points hunt having slipped