What better weekend to start with than here at the Nurburgring.
Coming into the weekend after a strong race at Silverstone, Ferrari were very optimistic of another very strong result here, after being very quiet over the hot blown diffuser row and introducing numerous new upgrades. McLaren too felt a strong result could be achieved at the Nurburgring, with Jenson fired up after a pitstop mistake forced him to retire at his home race, and Lewis after recent criticism of his beahviour on track was looking to put his critics to bed with a strong drive as ever.
As ever, the Eiffel mountains provided "interesting" weather conditions for the drivers to deal with, as track temperatures barely managed to top 20 degrees and rain threatening at every opportunity. Flashbacks of 2007 and even 1999 were evident.
Practice Sessions provided enough evidence that the Redbull dominance was far from convincing, with both Alonso and Hamilton making the most of the mixed conditions to push both Webber and Vettel at the top of the timing. Qualifying too was to be a lottery with the weather clearly in indecision, and it was to to be the driver who could confidently get heat into the tyres that would maximise his chances. Throughout the weekend Vettel had been looking less confident and seemingly couldnt get the car dialled into the slippery conditions. This became more evident as he could only put his RedBull 3rd on the grid, however a resurgant Webber adamant to prove his speed provided a cracking lap to put himself on pole wringing the neck of his RedBull. However the suprise would be McLaren and in particular Lewis driving to what he said was one of the best qualifying laps of his career, super confident as always he pushed the boundaries his McLaren could achieve matching Webber in the last of the late brakers enabling him to put his car 2nd on the grid while his teammate had a torrid time qualifying 7th 1.1 seconds off.
Come Race day Rain was expected but although it threatened, it never materialised meaning a dry but very slippery track surface awaited. Come the start Webber made a dire start from pole position allowing Lewis to get the jump on him, while Vettel had his hands full with the Ferrari's losing a position to Alonso demoting him to 4th place. Button's weekend went from bad to worse as he dropped to 10th from the start, finding himself tucked up behind Petrov's Renault.
The order stabilised with Hamilton leading from Webber and then Alonso, then on lap 10 the ever Consistent Vettel made a serious error dipping a wheel on the wet Astro Turf leading into turn 10, leading him to spin and drop11 seconds to the leaders.
At the front, the top 3 were covered by a mere 3 seconds leading up to the first 3 stops. Webber became the first guy to blink attempting the ever important undercut on new tyres while Hamilton and Alonso stayed out. Webber rejoined behind Sutil, quickly blasting past him and fast catching his team mate Vettel who he quickly dispachted. Lewis and Fernando pitted in unison coming out directly in the firing line of Webber attacking Massa into turn 1. Massa pitted for the first time dropping him to 8th place just ahead of the recovering Vettel.
The battle continued to rage upfront, with Webber holding off Alonso and Hamilton. Massa and Vettel bth started to climb back through the field passing both Kobayashi and Petrov on track, and Sutil and Button during the pit stop phase. The order remained static until the 2nd pit stop phase where Button had to retire due to an hydraulics failure, allowing Sutil some breathing space.
Up front Alonso managed to leapfrog Hamilton in the pit stops however due to the McLaren driver having more confidence on the new tyres due to stopping earlier he then re passed Alonso come turn 2, as Alonso felt his way around the first lap on new rubber. Track conditions began to evolve favouring the fresh hard tyres, this became evident as Lewis pitted for his 3rd and final stop blinking first of the top 3. Webber and Alonso stayed out trying to maximise the soft tyres as the fuel loads dropped. However the hard tyres were so much faster as Lewis started lighting up the timing screens. Alonso blinked next leaving Webber out alone, however both could not maximise the soft tyre advantage and stayed out too long enabling Hamilton to leap frog both to lead. This proved enough for 1st place as Webber and Alonso had no reply on the hard tyres.
Massa and Vettel's battle went to the pitstops as both pitted together on the penultimate lap, however Vettel managed to jump Massa due to a sticky rear wheel nut on the Ferrari allowing Vettel to capture 4th.
On another note the ever Consistent Heidfield had a day to forget making contact with Paul Di Resta on the first lap dropping both down to the back of the field. He was to get penalised for that incident before getting squeezed off the track by Buemi's STR sending Heidfield litteraly flying into the gravel trap. Buemi would be later given a 5 place grid penalty for the incident after the race for the Hungarian Gp.
This weekend leads to lots of questions going into Hungary. Will the McLarens carry the performance to Budapest? or did the slippery track conditions favour the McLaren car? Can Vettel stamp his dominance back on the Championship with a dominant weekend? Or was the Ferrari and McLaren pace a true sign theyre catching up? Will the promised improved pace of the Mercedes Gp car ever be fulfilled? Furthermore can Webber finally clinch his maiden 2011 F1 win after a string of 4 consecutive 3rd place finishes?
Going into the Budapest weekend Christian Horner has a lot of head scratching to do, as Webber and Vettel voice their opinions on improvements for the car. All this means is that the championship is far from over, and once again questions hang over the head of Vettel's ability to fight through the pack when hes not leading from the front. He still leads Hamilton by 82 and Alonso 86 points respectively, but it seems the tide is very slowly changing in favour of the 2 challengers.
Driver of the day had to be Lewis Hamilton or Adrian Sutil with a fantastic 6th place.
Villain of the day had to be Sebastian Buemi.
