[ad_1]
This shows that Lewis Hamilton will win his sixth world title this season and that, after his worst performance in years, the Mercedes driver has left the German Grand Prix with a slightly higher advance than his arrival.
And yet, the events of a remarkable race at Hockenheim on Sunday also stressed that nothing can ever be taken for granted in Formula 1.
Who could have predicted that Hamilton would be looking for new tires after leading comfortably during the first 28 rounds during which Mercedes and he were about to embark on a series of so unusual mistakes for a team that had so far placed all other F1 players in second place this year?
In the 20 rounds, Hamilton was 12th and asked his team: "How is it going so badly?"
Five laps after that, Hamilton turned around at the first corner, making another pit stop and reaching the last place.
His teammate Valtteri Bottas (fourth, but with a Toro Rosso and a Racing Point right in front of him) was thus a golden opportunity to carve out a place at the top of Hamilton and rekindle his hopes of title. Only for the Finn to fall heavily in the same corner.
Four hours after the end of the race, Alfa Romeo cars were demoted for a technical foul and Hamilton was promoted to ninth. The world champion therefore left Hockenheim, after what he described as "one of the worst weekends I can remember", with an advantage brought to 41 points.
Crazy races at Mercedes
Hamilton, who was still feeling the effects of the illness at the start of the weekend, had asked him if he would even be able to participate in the competition. He kept total control for almost half of the race.
Slowly behind Bottas behind him, Max Verstappen (Red Bull) putting pressure on the Finn but unable to pbad, and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) looking dangerous but manageable in fourth position, it seemed that Hamilton was losing. And then, he did it. But not until Leclerc did the same thing.
Lap 25, with the track dry and the tires worn, but the rain still falling, was a painful moment for the drivers and strategists.
Verstappen stopped for the tires for dry weather, then turned them into the stadium during his lap, but he managed to continue.
The brand runners who had done the same thing were starting to show signs of going faster. Ferrari called Leclerc on lap 27 for slicks.
A lap later, Hamilton also fought the slicks, which marked the beginning of the series of events that tore his race.
Leclerc has slipped into the clearance zone located at the penultimate corner. The 21-year-old had departed twice before. But this time, wearing slick tires on a wet track, he went further and discovered a surface that appeared to have been washed with soap suds.
The result gave the impression of an F1 that had just encountered a landslide for children. Leclerc slipped helpless into the gravel and came out of the race, after feeling like he could compete with Ferrari's strategy. all decisions come from it. The safety car has been deployed.
At the end of his exit lap, just like Leclerc, Hamilton made the same mistake, a little further down the corner. He hit the barrier. He somehow managed to avoid failing like the Ferrari, but he had damaged his front wing and had to make a hole to replace it.
To make the point, he had to put himself on the wrong side of an input terminal. It earned him five seconds. In the pits, the team did not expect it. When the wing was changed, other mechanics ran while the team was hesitant to choose the tires to ride, as if she were coming out of Keystone cops. Hamilton took 50 seconds to join the race, which he did in fifth place.
There was a restart and Hamilton climbed to third place. But there was also another safety car – after Renault's Nico Hulkenberg became the third driver to fall in the penultimate corner, he once again gave a chance to a solid result, as the # 39; German has done so many times before.
Verstappen, who had inherited his head when Hamilton crashed, found fresh, trimmed intermediate tires. Hamilton does not have any. He asked why – and they were told that they would have lost too many places at the expense of the other cars because they should have also taken the five-second penalty.
But the answer did not seem to make sense because the loss of time related to the penalty would be less severe if it stopped under optimal conditions, it would lose nothing in front of those who would have been so difficult to double – it could have fallen Alexander Albon of Toro Rosso, or maybe not – and he was probably going to have to stop again anyway.
Indeed, at the end of this safety car period, Toro Rosso and Racing Point made the decision to stop. Daniil Kvyat and Lance Stroll finished third and fourth. Then, after two laps, Hamilton had to stop anyway. And even that was too late.
It was a lap after Verstappen, who still stood up to trade the middlemen he had ridden a few laps before against Slicks and Bottas. Thus, while they joined the first and fourth places, Hamilton dropped to 12th place. And to finish in the late afternoon, Hamilton spun in the first corner five laps later and had to stop again to replace his damaged tires and join in the penultimate.
"It's really hard when you're sick of performing at a good level"
In his interviews, before attending Mercedes' report, Hamilton was naturally troubled by what had happened.
"These weekends are sent for you to try, but what I can say is that health is everything," he said. "This weekend, I could feel the feelings of all the patients who live in hospitals that are going through difficult times.I felt even more sensitive for them this weekend, knowing how horrible it is to To be sick.
"Obviously, my illness is tiny compared to a lot of people, but I had the impression that the world was ending for me a long time, so I have a lot of sympathy for them.
"But otherwise, it's really difficult when you have this performance at a very good level, I managed to do it in one lap (qualifying), but I really thought the day was going to be hard, especially to be wet.
"I did well until the first step, and then it was only a cascade of decisions." Let's move to the slick tire, I was not sure it was right. Act slick anyway, then they put them on, then I left, so I had to enter, so they were not ready and it kept going on and on.
"It was just hard for everyone – no matter where everyone else was finishing – I was leading the grand prize and finished just about the last." Is really very painful, I do not even know how. "
Later, he added: "The turning point was when they put tablecloths and they were still wet, others had put tablecloths but I stayed out because it was still wet and I continued as far as possible at the intersection.
"While they were calling me, I could see that it was raining over, but they usually got more knowledge than I. If I had said 'get started' & '. And that it was wrong, it could have been expensive, but as they put it was the same time as Leclerc and it was starting to rain more. "
Why were these unusual mistakes asked of him? "I am only a human," he replied.
Was it karma in the face of hubris?
Mercedes had spent the weekend celebrating 125 years in motorsport and its 200th F1 Grand Prix. There was a multitude of little touches, from a special painting job for cars to the team in costume right then.
But as their race unfolded, more than a few people wondered if the gods of the races were repaid to them what some had described as pride.
The boss of the team, Toto Wolff, described it as "a terrible day" and "a weekend of Armageddon".
"It's not embarrbading," he said. "It's a car race and sometimes you have to take a slap on the chin and learn. These are the days that make us better. We have to think about what's wrong.
"I believe in karma and when you want to do particularly well, sometimes things can go wrong.
"Maybe you can be distracted, maybe you'll do things differently than normal, I do not know, we'll summarize it rationally tomorrow and write down all the calls we missed or the things we did not do. we should not have done and will progress as a team. "
Hamilton said: "In the end, it was a combination of things – it's hugely annoying for us to be eight seconds in the lead at one point." It was like a domino after the other, like snakes and ladders, but we win and lose together.
"It shows you how easy it is to be wrong, but we stay together and we pull ourselves together, we pull ourselves together and come back to beat each other in. We were still pretty awesome up to the domino effect. We have to take the positives and leave all the bad, it's just a race and we keep moving forward. "
And stories on the ground
For Bottas, in terms of the championship, he will surely not come back from his mistake – Hamilton is unlikely to offer him a new chance.
And it remains to be seen how this will affect the Finns both psychologically and with regard to his future. Wolff is waiting for the summer break to decide to sign Bottas again for next year. Escaping from fourth place, which was likely to become second place, and sealing weekend bruises for his team would have hardly helped him.
Elsewhere, Red Bull strategists have pointed out that their unofficial status was arguably the best in F1 in such situations, guiding Verstappen, who is almost flawless, to a magnificent win, his second in three races.
Sebastian Vettel partially caught up on the Ferrari lead in second place behind the starting grid of the Ferrari in second place.
It was a great race for Toro Rosso. Kvyat took a podium, 11 races after returning to a team that sacked him at the end of the penultimate season. And Albon pointed to the raw speed and promise that he had already shown this season: he was ahead of Kvyat until he was not lucky to lose on an even better result than the sixth when they rolled the dice for the Russian at the strategy call the crucial period of the safety car.
And Alfa's penalty kick pushed Robert Kubica to the back row – his first point since returning eight years after the terrible injuries that at one point seemed to end his career. Until in Germany, he had not played as he would have hoped this season. But what a story it is.
In terms of F1 as a whole, it's now three great consecutive races in a season that, not long ago, was considered boring.
Hamilton could have a lock on the title, but this season has so much more to give.
Source link
