2011 Formula 1 German Grand Prix - Mercedes GP Qualifying Report

Originally Posted by Sticky

^ Damn nice job with the tables Scourge! Very well done article/post.

Thanks man! Hoping the race will as exciting as the qualifying

Hamilton won in style at an exciting Nurburgring today. He managed to come on top with a three way battle with Fernando Alonso, and Mark Webber that lasted till the end of the final pitstop at the closing stage of the race. All three drivers managed to lead the race at one point in the final 10 laps, with the distance between all three never going above 2 seconds. But Hamilton managed finish first after over taking Alonso on the first corner exit his pitstop. Vettel had a forgetful race as he fought with Ferrari's Massa for fourth place. Massa was able to hold of Vettel's attacks until they pitted for medium tires on the last lap. Red Bull's pit crew proved to be quicker and released him a full second faster than Massa's crew. Adrian Sutil took six spot after opting for one less stop than the rest. Nico Rosberg took seventh after having a battle with Massa at the beginning of the race. Michael Schumacher who started tenth on the grid managed to come in position over take Rosberg early in the race, fell victim to the wet astro turf and spun his car at the entrance to the corner named after him. Schumacher dropped to eleventh after that and fought his way back to take eight place. Kobayashi and Petrov round up the last 2 places in the top ten.

This race saw the retirement of Nick Hiedfeld after trying to over take Buemi, was squeezed to the grass and launching over one of the distance markers before Schumacher's corner. Other retirements were Jenson Button with a hydraulic failure, Barrichello because of an oil leak, and Liuzzi with electrical problems.

After the race the Mercedes GP team had this to say:

Nico Rosberg 7th place:

I had a good start to the race today and made up one position on the first lap to be running in fifth place. However I didn’t have a perfect set-up today and the car wasn’t working quite as well as in qualifying. Ihad some good battles with Massa but despite pushing hard, it was impossible to keep him behind me. Seventh place is ok but we know that we have some work to do to maximise our latest upgrades in the race. I have a great team behind me, both the engineers and the boys in the garage, so I am confident that we will do this and we will see what happens next week in Hungary.

Michael Schumacher 8th place:

We had lots of action for both the spectators and the drivers today. Hopefully everyone in the grandstands was entertained and it made up forthe cold temperatures a little. My spin caught me by complete surprise,but that spot is known to be tricky in wet conditions, even if the conditions were not so wet today. Anyway, it obviously cost me some positions which was a shame. Towards the end, rain could have helped butthe chances were low so I did not count on it. All in all, I am ok withthe race. With the little improvements we have made, we can look
forward to Hungary now.

Ross Brawn:

Things looked pretty good for us in the early stages of the race, with Nico running strongly in the top six, and he seemed set for a top six finish. However, the pace was not there in the third stint, which cost him a position. As for Michael, we believe that he braked on a damp patch on the way into turn 10, which caused him to spin. After that, he drove a strong recovery to finish less than ten seconds behind Nico. We saw some good racing all through the field today, with our drivers involved in plenty of it, and scored a few more important points for ourChampionship position.

Norbert Haug:

At least we scored points today with seventh and eighth positions for Nico and Michael. Our race speed was somewhat compromised as both Nico and Michael needed to save fuel for quite a long period of time. At the beginning of the race, our speed looked better relative to the pace of the top three teams than it did from one-third distance onwards

Full Race Results:

Pos

Country

Driver

Car

Team

Grid

Fastest Lap

Race Time

Points

1	great britain	Lewis Hamilton	3	McLaren-Mercedes	2	1:34.302	1:37:30.334	25
2	spain	Fernando Alonso	5	Ferrari	4	1:34.626	+00:03.980	18
3	australia	Mark Webber	2	Red Bull-Renault	1	1:34.468	+00:09.788	15
4	germany	Sebastian Vettel	1	Red Bull-Renault	3	1:34.587	+00:47.921	12
5	brazil	Felipe Massa	6	Ferrari	5	1:34.609	+00:52.252	10
6	germany	Adrian Sutil	14	Force India-Mercedes	8	1:36.653	+01:26.208	8
7	germany	Nico Rosberg	8	Mercedes GP	6	1:36.181	lapped	6
8	germany	Michael Schumacher	7	Mercedes GP	10	1:35.628	lapped	4
9	japan	Kamui Kobayashi	16	Sauber	17	1:36.659	lapped	2
10	russian federation	Vitaly Petrov	10	Renault	9	1:36.186	lapped	1
11	mexico	Sergio Perez	17	Sauber	15	1:37.033	lapped
12	spain	Jaime Alguersuari	19	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	16	1:37.415	lapped
13	great britain	Paul Di Resta	15	Force India-Mercedes	12	1:36.715	lapped
14	venezuela	Pastor Maldonado	12	Williams-Cosworth	13	1:37.568	lapped
15	switzerland	Sebastien Buemi	18	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	24	1:37.863	lapped
16	finland	Heikki Kovalainen	20	Lotus-Renault	18	1:39.050	lapped
17	germany	Timo Glock	24	Virgin-Cosworth	19	1:39.982	lapped
18	belgium	Jerome d'Ambrosio	25	Virgin-Cosworth	21	1:39.787	lapped
19	australia	Daniel Ricciardo	22	Hispania-Cosworth	22	1:40.489	lapped
20	india	Karun Chandhok	21	Lotus-Renault	20	1:40.435	lapped
21	italy	Vitantonio Liuzzi	23	Hispania-Cosworth	23	1:40.683	retired, 37 laps
22	great britain	Jenson Button	4	McLaren-Mercedes	7	1:36.258	retired, 35 laps
23	brazil	Rubens Barrichello	11	Williams-Cosworth	14	1:39.679	retired, 16 laps
24	germany	Nick Heidfeld	9	Renault	11	1:39.452	crash, 9 laps

Your articles are getting better and better! So glad to have you covering F1.

Interesting that Vettel didn't dominate this one. Might have been too soon to say he was running away with it.

Thanks man.

It was interesting watching Vettel today, it was almost like it was Coulthard driving the car not him. He continued to make mistakes left and right. The only reason he got fourth was because of his pit crew. It's too early to judge and say that he might cracking under pressure. The good thing out of it though is that the championship race is becoming interesting again. Vettel is a good driver, but I don't watch to watch F1 when the rest are just fighting for second place.

Originally Posted by DavidV

This is actually a quite funny remark of Ross Brawn.
Apparently they made an exhaust (probably copied a design) with some aero changes, and it worked like a charm at Silverstone, although they do not understand why, and are now desperately looking into this to see if they can squeeze more performance out of this system.
All the better for F1. The more competition up front, the more fun to watch.

It is funny, but what he said is true. It applies to all teams. Since they can't do in season testing anymore, they have to rely on simulators and weekend practice sessions to understand the new parts.

Not cool putting the race results in the thread title though...spoiled the race for me, and I only made it to lap 9!!!

Originally Posted by LZH

Not cool putting the race results in the thread title though...spoiled the race for me.

Ugh, sorry. It's hard in this instant world we live in to restrain from updating with those kinds of details.

We'll be more cautious in the future. Fortunately, all you knew was how MB did. Did you expect them to win anyway?

No sweat buddy, and yes, I always expect a Mercedes to win

Originally Posted by LZH

No sweat buddy, and yes, I always expect a Mercedes to win

You should stick to DTM watching. That would be less dissapointing