German Grand Prix Review

In that time, people with longer memories have kept on saying that Formula One was no longer what it used to be. In the past, there were enthralling races on monster tracks like the old Spa when half the track was wet, and half of it dry. There were mighty slipstreaming blasts along super-fast tracks like Monza, like the 1971 Italian GP. Drivers used to do the impossible and charge through the field from disastrous grid positions, like when John Watson once won from 22nd on the grid.

I read about all this in books, but I never thought I'd witness it in real life. Indeed, I was becoming morosely satisfied with pit stop strategies determining race outcomes along Mickey Mouse tracks packed with chicanes. But watching this race was like watching time being wound back. It was, simply, a Grand Prix belonging to another era.

The eeriness continued into the race. Since when has a driver, and a World Championship leader at that, been taken out at the first corner in two successive races? Everyone was probably caught off guard by Mika Hakkinen's superlative start. I remember the very first race I ever saw on TV was the 1989 German GP, and on that occasion Gerhard Berger's Ferrari leapt from 4th to 1st by the first corner, and here Hakkinen repeated the dose.

Coulthard for sure didn't expect that. He was totally preoccupied with Michael Schumacher, and I'm surprised that Schumacher didn't blame him more for the first corner incident. I thought the rule was that you were only allowed one lateral movement, that you could only change your line once. Coulthard did that by chopping across Schumacher, but then as Schumi got on his left he squeezed the Ferrari back to the outside. Surely that's a second movement?

So, up front, the McLarens were able to stretch their legs, but behind them was some of the best action seen in many years. Murray Walker described the nose-to-tail racing as like go karts, and you'd be hard pressed to disagree. Jarno Trulli was running a strong third by virtue of his relatively good grid position, while it was no real surprise to see the Arrows, Jaguars and BARs up there, because all three have strong engines. While we didn't see much of it, the cut and thrust then between the rest of the field, including the Williamses, the sole Benetton, plus the Saubers, Prosts and Minardis, was real heart-in-mouth stuff.

Through these packs Barrichello and Heinz-Harald Frentzen were charging on low fuel loads. Rubinho must have made some ace start. He got up into the top ten quickly, and then breezed past the BARs. His subsequent moves on Eddie Irvine, Jos Verstappen, Johnny Herbert, Pedro de la Rosa and Trulli were clinical, to say the least. I liked his move on Herbert especially, because Johnny simply wasn't expecting it. When passing has become a bit of a dying art, it was good to see it resurrected by Coulthard in France, and now thoroughly rejuvenated by Barrichello and Frentzen here.

That was until that poor soul decided to vent his anger at being sacked by Mercedes by straying onto the track. There are two ways of looking at this. Firstly, perhaps Mercedes will think twice before they sack someone next time, and secondly, that seeing as though he was dismissed on grounds of (mental?) health, we can only conclude that Mercedes made the right choice. At any rate, I guess he achieved his aims, and more, since he successfully managed to stuff up Mercedes-engined McLaren's merry way. For endangering his own life, as well as the drivers', he receives our 'Reject of the Race' Award.

We haven't seen anything as bizarre as this for a long time, but to me it too seemed like a hark back to bygone days when the weird and wonderful happened quite regularly in Grands Prix. I personally have no doubt that to bring out the safety car in that situation was the right thing to do. This was Ferrari's lifeline, but it seemed like Coulthard's downfall, since he did not pit at the same time as Hakkinen and was forced to come in after a slow lap behind the safety car due to what can only be explained as a communication mishap. As it turned out, the safety car was going at a fair clip, and the McLarens had such a gap that Coulthard didn't lose too much, but it was enough to essentially put the Scot out of the picture.

In hindsight, Pedro Diniz was probably a very obvious candidate. He'd been locking horns with team-mate Mika Salo for most of the race, and the pair had some very scary moments early on. Add to that, Diniz has shown throughout the year that he's driving with the blinkers on like he did back in his Forti days. He sideswiped Pedro de la Rosa at Montreal and then contributed to the mayhem in Austria, earning our 'reject of the race' award.

Here he proceeded to do unto poor Jean Alesi what he previously did to de la Rosa. With the singular difference that they were at the end of one of Hockenheim's long straights. The result was dramatic and violent, especially for Alesi, capping off an atrocious weekend for the Prost driver, who had been outgunned by Nick Heidfeld all weekend, and who had been stuck behind Marc Gene's Minardi throughout the first stint. If it weren't for our half-witted pitch invader, we would be giving our 'Reject of the Race' to Diniz once again.

Then there was also Ricardo Zonta, who'd managed to tap Ralf Schumacher into a spin on the first restart, and looked like an accident waiting to happen as the rain started falling and more hell broke loose. Having run so close to team-mate Jacques Villeneuve throughout this race, it came as no surprise that the unfortunate Canadian would be the victim of the Brazilian's shenanigans. As Zonta made his ambitious dive down the inside into turn one, Villeneuve already gave him space, but Ricardo bumped him anyway. Clearly, 'backing off' doesn't belong in the Zonta vocabulary.

Very quickly it was established that the rain was on only half the track, creating a remarkable dilemma that F1 hasn't seen for years. Natural instinct would say you go for wets and just hope they don't burn up on the dry track. As race leader, I'm not surprised that Hakkinen went conservative and came in. I wasn't overly surprised that Coulthard, Frentzen and Zonta stayed out either. Coulthard had nothing to lose, Frentzen's a natural racer, and Zonta simply constantly overestimates his own ability. That he eventually went off was rather predictable.

A whole bunch of reasons must have contributed to the rest of the order being what it was, but with Frentzen retiring, Trulli coming in for a stop/go penalty (in the end Jordan had a pretty shoddy day too, didn't they?) and Coulthard giving up his experiment and coming in, that left Hakkinen chasing in 2nd, followed by Salo, Coulthard, Jenson Button and De la Rosa. It must have taken some incredible pit stops by Sauber and Williams to catapult Salo and Button past the Arrows (although a spin from the Spaniard did help).

Williams especially, considering that Button had stalled on the warm-up lap and started from the back of the field. In the first half of the race he was only able to stay in front of Gaston Mazzacane's Minardi, but somehow, in amongst the pit stops and safety cars, he must have driven some mightily impressive laps to leap up the field. Not content, he muscled past Salo as Coulthard had already done, and then put in a fine (but ultimately unsuccessful) bid for a podium finish. Given two more laps and Button would have snuck past Coulthard.

The minutes immediately after the race were utterly incredible. You could sense that Rubens was crying all the way around the slowdown lap, and when he got back to parc ferme, it was so refreshing to see both Hakkinen and Coulthard as happy for Rubinho as Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari mechanics. Seeing Rubens' emotion on the podium as the Brazilian anthem was being played (for the first time, if you can believe it, since Adelaide in 1993 when Ayrton Senna won), you had to be happy for him.

Instead of the usual team-by-team wrap, this race I'm devoting my comments solely to Rubens Barrichello. The pit wall at Hockenheim, with its high fencing, isn't overly conducive to pit crew celebrations. The whole Ferrari team leant out as Rubens crossed the line, as they would, but so too the Jaguar mechanics, many of whom had served Rubinho at Stewart last year. I imagine Eddie Jordan probably had tears in his eyes as well, and if they could, I think the whole pit lane, to a man, would have been on the pit wall saluting Barrichello as he took the flag. In this case, the blaring horns from the massive crowd, which drowned everything else out, would have to do.

This was the happiest day in pit lane for five years. The last time there was anything like this was in Canada in 1995, when Jean Alesi took his maiden, and as yet only, victory (and, of course, Barrichello came 2nd for Jordan). He too was driving a Ferrari that day. Immediately I drew comparisons between the two occasions, and my first reaction was to ask, why had people clamoured for Jean's first win so much more than for Rubens'? After all, Jean's victory came in his 91st race, but this was Rubens' 124th Grand Prix. Rubens' win was a slight shock, but a pleasant surprise. Jean's win had been seen as 'justice'. Why was that?

Herein lay the answer. Both are emotional men, but that's just about where the similarity ends. Alesi was temperamental, explosive. Barrichello was sentimental, endearing. Alesi had been given a chance in the top flight much earlier, and was very much an obvious nearly man. Despite the same amount of talent flowing from his fingertips, Barrichello has spent most of his career in cars which knocked on the doors of the top echelon and only rarely broke through. Even when he got his hands on a Ferrari this year, he had to defer to Michael Schumacher. On paper, Rubens hadn't 'deserved' his win as much as Alesi had.

But on another level, he had deserved it a lot more than Jean. When Rubens made his debut in 1993, the whole world knew he was one of the best talents going around. In 1994, when the Jordan looked competitive, perhaps this was his fast-track to glory. I remember the Pacific GP at Aida, where Jamie McGregor and I cheered him on as he took 3rd place and his first podium finish. The next Senna was on his way.

However, Barrichello's world would turn upside down a fortnight later at Imola. He suffered his horrific crash on the Friday, followed by Senna's fatal accident on the Sunday. Taking up the mantle as Brazil's great hope way before he was ready for it, he collapsed under the weight of expectations, both from his countrymen, and from his Jordan team which was becoming more and more desperate to join the elite, and yet growing more and more stagnant as 1995 and 1996 wore on.

Rubinho's stint with Stewart put him back onto the straight and narrow, and in 1999 we finally saw glimpses of his raw talent once again. However, that seemed stifled when he signed with Ferrari, because everyone with eyes to see knew the score, a score that was squarely in favour of Schumacher. For much of this year it has looked as though his ability has been fatally quelled by his number 1B role, as he likes to put it. But with this win, perhaps he can break free of his own inhibitions and let the talent that we all know he possesses flow freely.

Well, we all have to come down from cloud nine eventually, and we might just do that on the pathetic Hungaroring track. Yet the championship is now astonishingly close, with ten points separating the top 4, and two points covering the first 3. Schumacher somehow still leads despite not finishing the last 3, and 4 out of the last 5. He'll need a repeat of his superb 1998 performance in Budapest to assert himself against the McLaren onslaught.