2014 German GP Executive Summary

Hamilton Locking up into Raikkonen.

The German GP gave us some pretty exciting racing but why is it that people are not so excited about F1 this year?

Part of it is the Mercedes domination, when Ferrari dominated, when Mclaren dominated or Williams, it was different. I guess Mercedes is not warm and fuzzy in any way, it's hard to cheer for the teutonic giant.
Turns out not even Germans are that excited and the GP at Hockenheim had fairly low spectator turnout. 50 some thousand vs the 200 some thousand who crowded the Austrian GP.

Of course the Austrian GP was subsidized by Red Bull and tickets were uniformly inexpensive, and order of magnitude less expensive than any other race... Hint, hint F1.

Like at the Red Bull Ring though, there is something about Hockenheim which makes for good racing. Both are simple layouts with not too many corners and some slow turns.
Slow turns are a feature of Tilke tracks but simple certainly is not. One could argue Tilke tracks started with good intentions but became too clever for their (and the sport's) own good.

Perhaps F1 has done the same.

Massa flipped

Full marks for having one Mercedes start from the back, At least Hamilton had a good time slicing though the field as you would expect with a car capable of finishing 20 seconds ahead of P2. Lewis was lucky to escape a penalty for barging into Raikkonen and compromising his race somewhat.

His issue with Button was more of a 50/50 thing, Button left a hole so you can't blame Hamilton for going for it. In any case, hats off to Hamilton for putting on a good show.

Ricciardo, Alonso and Bottas were the true stars of the race. Ricciardo was, as even Fernando said, amazing. His move on Button was textbook, I can't believe a world champion fell for that dummy. His fight with Alonso in the end, what we all wish F1 would be but in a fight for at least the podium.

Alonso as usual was able to get more out of, in Niki Lauda's words, "a shit car" than anyone else can. It's very interesting how F1 drivers have come to modify their lines to get the most traction out of their tires in slow corners. Reminiscent of Moto GP riders where try to lift their bikes as soon as possible, the cleverest drivers are avoiding a traditional line to minimize the time spent turning and squaring off the corners as much as possible. Alonso,Vettel, Bottas, all very adept at that trick.


Bottas was able to hold Hamilton at bay for many laps with that way. We will hear much more from the Finn in coming years.