European Grand Prix Review

It's difficult enough on opening laps when drivers are bringing their tyres up to temperature. It must be bordering on nightmarish when rain starts falling almost simultaneously. But that's exactly what happened, and those who pitted at the end of lap one for intermediates found themselves at a massive advantage compared to those who chose to stay out - or, in pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen's case, those who tried to enter pit lane but slithered back onto the track proper.

David Coulthard was a case in point. After a horror qualifying that saw him start 20th, he had been one of those caught up in numerous first lap incidents, including both BMWs, Hamilton, Nico Rosberg (twice) and Rubens Barrichello. But that meant he did not have to queue behind Mark Webber in the Red Bull pits, allowing him to leapfrog those who had to wait behind their team-mates, and those who had stayed out. By the time the Safety Car came out, the wily Scot was, amazingly, up to 5th.

It has been a long time since a rainstorm this intense has hit a Grand Prix. Turn one acted as a funnel and fast became a river that caused Hamilton, Rosberg, Jenson Button, Adrian Sutil and both Toro Rossos of Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi to aquaplane off. The red flag was the correct decision, and if anything was too late, though even if the race was stopped it might not have prevented the turn one carnage. Liuzzi's wild ride, that almost sideswiped the Safety Car and a tractor, was particularly hairy.

In hindsight, better even than pitting at the end of the first lap would have been to actually start the race on intermediates. That's exactly what debutant Markus Winkelhock did, and amazingly the fifth German in the race found himself with a 33-second lead when the Safety Car came out, and the honour of sitting at the front of the queue, in a Spyker when the race was halted. It was an incredible turnaround after the troubled weekend that the third Winkelhock in F1 had been having up to that point.

Winkelhock must surely be in exalted company when it comes to leading his debut race (along with the likes of Hamilton and Jacques Villeneuve), but how many would have led their one and only GP (if this does turn out in time to have been his only race)? It was a shame his huge lead was taken away by the Safety Car and the red flag, but the officials had no choice. But given this, and Sutil's timesheet-topping heroics in Saturday free practice at Monaco, Spyker must now be doing rain dances at every venue...

In the end, Markus' heroics were short-lived. A further gamble to take the restart on full wets turned out to be a wrong choice, even though he had nothing really to lose, and Winkelhock slid down the field faster than he would have anyway had he been on intermediates. Eventually hydraulics failure brought a premature end to his day, but almost without doubt his brief cameo - for that was all it was - will go down as one of the more memorable moments of the 2007 season.

It has also been a very long time since a Grand Prix was last red-flagged, such is the preference to rely upon the Safety Car these days. And, amidst the potential confusion, to give credit where it's due, the FIA handled everything absolutely correctly. In bygone days, races that had been stopped and run on aggregate times proved impossible to follow. Here, the fact that the race had been stopped during a Safety Car period, and resumed under the Safety Car, meant that the race could proceed as it stood.

The fact that teams were also able to change tyres for the restart was also welcome common sense. Even the handling of Hamilton made sense. It is arguable whether he should have been pushed to the back or whether he should have lined up, a lap down, directly behind Winkelhock, but once he had gone to the back, then under this year's Safety Car rules it was right for him to be waved pass the entire field and the Safety Car to bring him back onto the lead lap.

With the sun out, the track was now drying rapidly, and as drivers virtually all switched back to dries within a lap of each other, refuelling was also the smart thing to do. In changeable weather conditions it always seems to be an advantage to be fuelled as long as possible - it gives you the widest window in which to make your tyre choices. Plus, once wets had been used, the 2007 rule about using both soft and hard compounds is disregarded, and in effect everyone could use hards for the rest of the race.

So in effect it became a virtual one-stop race, and the only frontrunner who missed this point, and whose race remained a two-stopper in effect, was Heikki Kovalainen who would pay the price later. For the lead and the win, it was a straight race between the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Raikkonen, and Alonso's McLaren, with Massa out front and progressively pulling away from Alonso, as the Ferrari F2007 confirmed that it had reclaimed its dominant position ahead of the McLaren MP4/22.

Massa has been outdone by Raikkonen since France, and his Nurburgring weekend had been up and down. But, like in Turkey and Brazil last year, and Bahrain and Spain this year, when he gets in front he becomes relentless - when it's dry. He would have held on for the win had the late drizzle not arrived. But he remains a massive liability in the wet, as was shown in Hungary last season. He complained about vibrations on his last set of inters, but the reality is that he was not as composed as Alonso and got eaten alive.

Alonso did not have the car-speed to match Massa, but deserved much credit for holding off Raikkonen and keeping Massa within too-close-for-comfort range during the middle stages. Once the late shower came, he made use of his car control and his ability to find grip on unorthodox lines to catch the Brazilian hand over fist, before putting on that surprising move that had them both riled afterwards because of the contact they made - but the reality was that it was good, forceful F1 as we love to see.

Raikkonen, on the other hand, must be starting to hate this place. He came second in both the 2003 and 2005 championships, and in both years a dramatic retirement at the Nurburgring was one of the turning points of this season. And so it may prove again in 2007. He had a comfortable pole and the initial lead, and had the race stayed dry and his car remained reliable, then almost certainly he would have romped home to his third consecutive victory.

But his error coming into the pits at the end of lap one dropped him back, and we never got the chance to see what he could do around the pit stops because of his hydraulics failure. He stays 18 points behind Hamilton, but crucially has lost ground to Alonso and Massa. Like in '05, this year has been a real case of two steps forward, one step back. Ferrari's dilemma is that 18 points is almost insurmountable over just seven races, but Raikkonen is now indisputably Ferrari's faster man. Do they back Massa from here?

Red Bull refreshingly found themselves right at the pointy end, as much as a result of good management and tactics as because of pace, although the team had been competitive throughout free practice and Webber was 6th on the grid. Despite running briefly ahead of his team-mate, Coulthard dropped back behind Webber, Alexander Wurz and Kovalainen, and the race for what became 3rd came down to those three, although Renault's strategy would eventually take Heikki out of the equation as well.

Webber had his nervy moments, compounding the fact that one was never sure if the Red Bull would last, given its atrocious reliability record this year. But he held on for a well-deserved podium, a real fillip for himself and his team. However, it was arguable that Wurz behind him had the slightly more consistent performance, as his experience came to the fore again as it did in Canada. Within Williams, even if Rosberg has been faster this year, there's no denying that the points table reads 13-5 in Alex's favour.

The birth of Nick Heidfeld's second child might have been distracting him this weekend. Perhaps upset that Robert Kubica had got inside of him at the first corner, Nick left his car hanging in no-man's land going into turn two, and tagged his team-mate as a result. Despite this, and despite a few mistaken calls on tyres (Heidfeld ended up making six stops all afternoon), both were quickly back into the top ten and in the battle behind Coulthard, along with Fisichella and Ralf Schumacher.

Heidfeld then took out Ralf in a more 50-50 racing incident that left the Toyota driving fuming, and although Ralf had made a slight error at the Veedol chicane, Nick had never got enough of a run down the inside. It marked the end of another promising race for Schumacher, on the back of his weekend at Silverstone, as the much-maligned German seems to have responded well to improvements and changes in the TF107 chassis, but his career is far from out of the woods just yet.

Eventually, Kubica looked set for 6th behind Coulthard before losing the position on the last lap to his team-mate, who did not deserve the added point. Meanwhile, the other driver who had been in that battle earlier on, Fisichella, finished 10th behind Kovalainen and Hamilton after an unimpressive weekend in which he had failed to match his team-mate's speed in practice, qualifying or race trim, although for whatever reason Giancarlo has always seemed to find the Nurburgring a bit of a bogey track for him.

Back to Hamilton then, and it was good to see him finally placed in a situation when he had to respond to adversity, and there was plenty of it facing him this weekend. Firstly there was his terrifying qualifying shunt caused by his front right wheel failure, and the several hours in hospital which, even if merely precautionary, would have mentally affected his preparation for the race. Then, from 10th on the grid, he made a demon start to get up to 6th, but was tagged by the spinning Kubica at the second corner.

There was nothing particularly controversial about this. Back in 2003, Michael Schumacher had, at this very track, been the beneficiary of the rule that says you are allowed to receive outside assistance to get you going if you are in a dangerous position, and there was no doubt that the turn one gravel trap was a very dangerous place to be. The only question was why the marshals did not motion to Lewis to get out of the McLaren; if it was so dangerous, surely it was safer to be on the other side of the wall.

But, in the absence of being ushered away by the marshals, it was tremendous presence of mind from Lewis to stay in the car and keep his engine running. Upon the restart, he then gained his lap back thanks to the rule about letting lapped cars through. The rule was designed to stop slower cars from getting in the way at restarts, but the legislators probably never envisaged that it could be used to benefit the championship leader who had struck trouble.

Had he not been allowed to unlap himself, though, he would surely have got past Winkelhock at the restart, and he would have been roughly where he ended up relative to Massa anyway. Where he could have gained a huge advantage was if he had done a lap at racing speed, warmed up his tyres and gauged the track conditions, before joining the back of the queue for the restart and eating half the field for breakfast. But, it was here that Hamilton and McLaren made their biggest mistake of the afternoon.

After all this, Lewis was just a few seconds up the road from Massa and eventually lapped by the Ferrari, having traded fastest laps with the Brazilian. No real surprises there - we know the Englishman is devastatingly fast. But he was so far behind the rest of the field, he never got the chance to catch many of them up to pass them, and those he did catch, such as Jarno Trulli and Barrichello, didn't make life difficult for him. Only Fisichella put up anything that resembled a fight.

In contrast to pitting too early for dries, when the rain came again late in the race he pitted too late for intermediates, putting him back behind Fisichella and meaning that he just ran out of time by a lap or two to take Kovalainen and pinch the last point. It now leaves him just two points clear of Alonso and 11 ahead of Massa, with seven races to go after something of a mid-season slump, consisting of two somewhat uncompetitive races at Magny-Cours and Silverstone, and this up and down showing at the Nurburgring.

The conclusion on Lewis in the face of adversity was that it was inconclusive. He did well the things we already know he can do well - terrific pace on a clear track, brilliant starts, great presence of mind and overall mind-management. But he never got the chance to pass some of the faster cars on the track to barge his way up the points, and his two tyre decisions in changing conditions, one way too early and the other too late, was ultimately his call despite his team's input, and both undoubtedly, completely wrong.

REJECT OF THE RACE
The Tyre Gamblers
Lewis and Heikki bet the house and lost

It's all well and good to rely on a computer forecast, but when there was not a drop of rain for several minutes yet, it was a ridiculous gamble. Heikki burnt his inters on a dry track, such that when the rain did fall the tyres had lost their best, and a lap or two more and he would have been out of the points altogether. For the poor tyre decisions by both vaunted rookies, Hamilton and Kovalainen and their teams, we give the 'Reject of the Race' award to the tyre gamblers on this occasion.

As for the rest of the field, this was a day on which both Honda drivers, who had been re-signed for 2008, could have shone - think back to Hungary last year - but neither of them did. As for their Super Aguri counterparts, both showed revitalised pace in qualifying, and Takuma Sato was on the edge of the top ten when his hydraulics failed, his place on the leaderboard taken by team-mate Anthony Davidson, who had also been a turn one victim but had managed to keep it out of the gravel.

Trulli had a disappointing race having mistakenly chosen full wets at the restart after what had been another creditable qualifying effort, whereas Speed and Liuzzi's incidents at turn one, even if they could have done little about it, added fuel to their bosses' alleged desire to get rid of them. Speed and Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost had an unsavoury altercation back in the pits, and though there are no driver changes at this point, it would be a surprise if either of them drives a Toro Rosso in 2008.