GerMAN alive! Vettel wins on home soil at last!

What better way to spend a sunny summer Sunday than to stay inside all afternoon watching the F1? And this year’s German grand prix was certainly worth the vitamin D deficiency…

Pole sitter Hamilton suffered the classic Red Bull pincer movement off the start, but overall it was a pretty clean getaway for the field.

In the first few laps we almost saw a crash between teammates Jenson Button and Sergio Perez. On lap 4 Felipe Massa retired from the race after a spin.

Then it was an early round of first pit stops by the majority of the field. Webber’s pit stop on lap 9 resulted in a rogue wheel colliding into a cameraman located in the Mercedes garage further down the pit lane. Incredibly, Webber still made it out onto the track having been wheeled back to the Red Bull garage after the incident. The cameraman is in hospital under observation, but apparently he’s doing ok folks.

“Don’t hold him up” – blurted the radio message to Rosberg on lap 12. By lap 14, Rosberg complied with the not-so-subtle team orders to move Hamilton up to 5th. About a third of the way through the race we saw some elegantly aggressive driving in another brilliant Hamilton-Alonso scrap.

Bianchi’s engine gave up on lap 24. Cue alarming amounts of smoke and flames. But the race wasn’t over for Bianchi’s car – despite not having a driver, the car decided to rejoin the track. Yep, cue safety car.

Lotus Renault Renaissance

Raikkonen picked off the two Mercedes cars at the same chicane only a few laps apart – there’s definitely a rally flavour to his driving style which we love. Even Grosjean was on surprisingly good form (I know!).

From lap 35 we saw the two Lotus Renaults chasing down race leader Vettel. On lap 41 Grosjean pitted to attempt the undercut on Vettel, but Red Bull reacted on lap 42 and pitted Vettel in time to come out in front of Grosjean. The two drivers swapped fastest laps as the hunt continued.

Famous for the brevity of his radio messages, Raikkonen had radio communication issues during the German grand prix which meant the team could only hear messages radioed from a particular section of the track.

It looked for a minute as though Raikkonen, the then race leader, might be able to see out the final 10 laps of the race on his 3rd set of tyres. Sadly not, as he pitted on lap 50 for a fresh set of softs.

“Yes yes yes and yes again”

Lap 52 and the team orders were issued to Grosjean. We heart Kimi too. But with 5 laps to go of the race it was a tough order to chase and pass Vettel who was 2 seconds up the road.

In the final lap of the race Hamilton managed to redeem some of the lost promise of the German grand prix to take 5th from former teammate Jenson Button. Sadly for Raikkonen, though, he ran out of road to catch Vettel. “Yes yes yes and yes again” – Vettel’s reaction to his first home win said it all really (and not bad having just celebrated his birthday 4 days ago!) Congrats and Happy Birthday Seb!

Anzeigetafel (that’s German for scoreboard, apparently)