It was a wild & wooly one at Hockenheim earlier today. Come with me below the fold to see how things sorted out when the dust settled…
Rosberg dominates in Germany while Hamilton storms through field for 3rd; Williams’ Bottas gets 2nd place for second week in a row
In a frantic and downright dangerous German Grand Prix with the threat of rain that never came, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg went from Pole to top step on the Podium seemingly without a hitch. But behind him in the field chaos reigned. Williams’ Filipe Massa touched tires with McLaren’s Jan Magnussen entering Turn 1 on Lap 1 at the Hockenheimring, sending the veteran Brazilian end over end in a scary flip that ended his race but thankfully did no damage to the man. Massa’s junior teammate Valtteri Bottas subsequently drove a strong race to pick up the pieces for Williams and claim a remarkable 2nd place for the legendary English team, the young Finn’s second 2nd in row. Most incredibly, Rosberg’s Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton stormed home to take the last step on the podium with a 3rd place finish after starting way back in 20th due to his crash in Q1 Saturday and resultant gearbox change penalty. Despite the fact that Hamilton clashed with former teammate Jenson Button on track and now trails Rosberg by 14 points in the Championship, the English former World Champion proved once again that if you need a lot of passing done in an F1 race, he’s your man.
And speaking of epic dicing, the trio of Vettel, Alonso and Ricciardo did battle for much of the race, trading hard charging moves and jinks to try to gain advantage on the tight and twist track. In the end, the Red Bulls sandwiched the Ferrari, with Vettel taking a strong 4th place finish and Alonso just pipping Ricciardo for 5th at the death. Nico Rosberg kept up his impressive consecutive points streak for Force India with 7th while Jenson Button came home a solid if unspectacular 8th and teammate Magnussen was able to recover from his contretemps with Massa to take 9th. Force India’s Sergio Perez grabbed the last points paying position with 10th after being told in no uncertain terms by his race engineer to save fuel as the race unfolded.
Aside from Massa’s spectacular crash, other misfortunes included Romain Grosjean’s Lotus quitting on lap 27, Adrian Sutil spinning on the front straight on lap 48 in an incident where the Safety Car was inexplicably not deployed and Daniil Kvyat’s Torro Rosso catching on fire on lap 45. All in all, it was a high intensity and fraught German GP that saw a native son run from the Pole to the Checker and his teammate and only real rival show that he is still game for the fight no matter what adversity is thrown at him.
Top 10 finishers here:
| Pos | No | Driver | Team | Laps | Time/Retired | Grid | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | 67 | 1:33:42.914 | 1 | 25 |
| 2 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Williams-Mercedes | 67 | +20.7 secs | 2 | 18 |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 67 | +22.5 secs | 20 | 15 |
| 4 | 1 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull Racing-Renault | 67 | +44.0 secs | 6 | 12 |
| 5 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Ferrari | 67 | +52.4 secs | 7 | 10 |
| 6 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull Racing-Renault | 67 | +52.5 secs | 5 | 8 |
| 7 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Force India-Mercedes | 67 | +64.1 secs | 9 | 6 |
| 8 | 22 | Jenson Button | McLaren-Mercedes | 67 | +84.7 secs | 11 | 4 |
| 9 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | McLaren-Mercedes | 66 | +1 Lap | 4 | 2 |
| 10 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 66 | +1 Lap | 10 | 1 |
Complete race results for the German Grand Prix from Formula1.com here.
The next race is next weekend in Hungary. Hope to see you then!