MSN > Autos > Sport
Hamilton on top of everyone as he wins the German Grand Prix
After an easy start from Pole Position and a fairly easy first half of the race, Lewis Hamilton was forced to bring out the best in him to gain back to the lead, and he made it.
Within 15 laps from the start, the Briton was able to build a 10-second lead from Massa, and he was looking very good for the win until Glock's right-rear suspension failed on the 36th lap and his Toyota spun and crashed, and safety car had to be deployed for clearing the debris.
Everything seemed to change from that moment; Hamilton lost all of the lead he has built, and once the pitlane was declared open, most cars flooded for theirs stops, but the Briton did not. Once the race was properly resumed, he knew he had exactly a 23-second lead to build; he managed to pull back 15.7 from them before pitting, and came out to finish the rest and indeed took over the top four drivers within 8 laps.
By that Lewis Hamilton finished in first position, followed by Piquet who has reached his first formula one podium after starting from 17th on the grid. He admitted that he got lucky due to safety car rules, but he is starting to improve, and that's definitely why he is "obviously very happy" as he said after the race!
Felipe Massa wasn't able to hold his 2nd qualifying position in spite of fighting hardly with Lewis Hamilton in most of the race, and particularly on lap 57 as Hamilton took over at the hairpin, with Massa briefly coming on top again before Hamilton managed to retake his position and start chasing Piquet.
Nick Heidfeld summed up his achievement saying "Coming fourth from 12th on the grid is a great result". He managed to get in front of Kovalainen extending the gap between them to 13 points, and narrowed the gap to his teammate, Robert Kubica, to only 7 points.
Raikkonen and Kubica came home 6th and 7th finishing a disappointing weekend to their teams, as they had qualified in these exact same spots.
In 8th position, Toro Rosso's Vettel scored the race's last point building a four-point lead over his teammate, Bourdais, who hasn't scored a single point in the previous 9 races.
With the race complete, Hamilton is now on top of the drivers with 58 points, followed by the Ferraris of Massa & Raikkonen at 54 & 51, then the BMW's of Kubica and Heidfeld at 48 & 41.
As for the constructors, Ferrari is still on top, followed by BMW then McLaren. The only change in positions was Renault going in front of Toyota-Williams to take 6th position and by that a three-way competition on fourth position is formed, with Toyota, Red-Bull and Renault at 25, 24 and 23.
Read More:
Lewis Hamilton brilliantly wins his home Grand Prix
The New Red Bull Car Park Drift
Transsyberia Rally 2008: Porsche teams reach
User Comments
- Your Name
- *
- Your E-mail
- Comment Title
- *
- Comment
- *