The 2008 German Grand Prix (formally the Formula 1 Grosser Preis Santander von Deutschland 2008) was a Formula One motor race held on 20 July 2008 at the Hockenheimring, Hockenheim, Germany. It was the 10th race of the 2008 Formula One World Championship and was contested over 67 laps. It was won by Lewis Hamilton for the McLaren team after starting from pole position. Nelson Piquet Jr. finished second for Renault, with Felipe Massa third for Ferrari.
Hamilton maintained his startline advantage and led until he made his first pit stop on lap 18. As other cars made their pit stops, Hamilton regained the lead on lap 22. On lap 36, Timo Glock crashed, and the race was neutralized by the deployment of the safety car. Hamilton, on a two-stop strategy, did not stop to get more fuel during this period, while all the cars around him did. Thus, when he did eventually stop on lap 50, he rejoined the race in fifth position. In the closing stages of the race, Hamilton first overtook his teammate Heikki Kovalainen, then Massa, and finally Piquet, whilst also gaining a position due to Nick Heidfeld's late pit stop. This allowed him to take the lead again on lap 60, which he maintained to win the race.
The victory was Hamilton's second consecutive win, having won the preceding at Silverstone. The win also put him ahead of his two main rivals in the Drivers' Championship, Kimi Räikkönen (who finished sixth) and Massa, who were on equal points with him before the race. After the race he was four points ahead of Massa, and seven ahead of Räikkönen. In the Constructors' Championship, McLaren drew closer to the two teams ahead of them, BMW Sauber and Ferrari. Ferrari still led by 15 points from McLaren, and 12 from BMW, whose drivers – Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica – finished fourth and seventh respectively.
Background The Grand Prix was contested by 20 drivers, in ten teams of two. The teams, also known as "constructors", were Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, BMW Sauber, Honda, Force India, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Williams and Toro Rosso. Tyre supplier Bridgestone selected the hard and medium tyres for the Grand Prix weekend. Prior to the race, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen, and Felipe Massa led the Drivers' Championship jointly, all with 48 points. Behind them was Robert Kubica in fourth with 46 points for BMW Sauber, and his teammate Nick Heidfeld in fifth with 36 points. In the Constructors' Championship, Ferrari were leading with 96 points, 14 points ahead of BMW Sauber, who at this stage were ahead of McLaren, despite Hamilton tying for the lead of the Drivers' World Championship. This was due to Heikki Kovalainen's low point score of 24. Toyota were fourth, with 25 points, ahead of Red Bull by one point, who in turn were one further point ahead of Renault.
Hamilton had won the preceding by 68 seconds from Heidfeld and Honda's Rubens Barrichello. Of his championship rivals, Räikkönen had finished fourth, Kubica had retired, and Massa had had a nightmare of a race, spinning five times and finishing 13th. In the run-up to the German Grand Prix, Hamilton had tested the McLaren MP4-23's new front wing – introduced at the British Grand Prix – extensively in the team's simulator, and then during a pre-race test session at the Hockenheim circuit. Having honed the car's setup to his liking after initially finding the handling difficult, he used it in the race. Kovalainen was not as comfortable with the car's handling and ran a greater front wing angle to produce more downforce, at the expense of having to run larger radiators due to the reduced airflow produced over the car. This led to a slight reduction in his car's overall performance. In other technical developments, Ferrari introduced revised bargeboards, exhaust exits and an altered windscreen for its F2008 car. BMW Sauber added turning vanes to the top of its F1.08's nose, while Toyota removed some bodywork from its TF108's exhaust exits. Honda also introduced new bargeboards for its RA108 chassis. All of these changes were carried out with the aim of improving each car's aerodynamic performance.
Practice Three practice sessions were held before the Sunday race – two on Friday, and a third on Saturday. The Friday morning and afternoon sessions each lasted 90 minutes. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour. During the first practice session the track was wet following early-morning rain, and shortly after the session started, further precipitation made the track even wetter, although it did begin to dry out as the session progressed. Hamilton was fastest in this session ahead of his teammate Kovalainen. The Ferraris of Massa and Räikkönen came third and fifth respectively, with Renault's Fernando Alonso sandwiched between them in fourth place. Kubica spun off the track and Sébastien Bourdais had a mechanical problem with his flywheel sensor towards the end of the session. Both ended up at the bottom of the timesheets as a result of these problems.
Friday's second session was held in dry conditions. Hamilton again set the fastest time. Massa and Räikkönen improved to second and third positions, pushing Kovalainen down to fourth. Mark Webber set the fifth-fastest time, after earlier having electrical and clutch problems with the car. Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Kubica, Heidfeld and David Coulthard made up the rest of the top ten. In the final practice session on Saturday – which was held in dry conditions – Kovalainen was fastest, ahead of Massa and teammate Hamilton. Alonso continued his strong practice form, finishing fourth, with Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel making it to fifth position. Kubica once again was at the bottom of the table, this time due to a transmission problem.
Qualifying
The qualifying session on Saturday afternoon was split into three parts. The first part ran for 20 minutes, and cars that finished the session 16th or lower were eliminated from qualifying. The second part of qualifying lasted 15 minutes and eliminated cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying determined the positions from first to tenth, and decided pole position. Cars which failed to make the final session could refuel before the race, so ran lighter in those sessions. Cars which competed in the final session of qualifying were not allowed to refuel before the race, and as such carried more fuel than in the previous sessions.
Hamilton took pole position for the ninth time in his career with a lap time of 1:15.666, having beaten Massa by two-tenths of a second in his final lap of the third session. Kovalainen, coming back after an error during his first run, qualified third, with Jarno Trulli taking fourth position. Alonso and Räikkönen were close together in fifth and sixth positions, with just 0.004 seconds separating them. Kubica took a comfortable seventh, half a second quicker in the third session than eighth-placed Webber. Vettel and Coulthard completed the top ten. Timo Glock took 11th place on the grid for Toyota, seven places behind his teammate Trulli. He was immediately in front of compatriots Heidfeld and Rosberg. Jenson Button and Bourdais took 14th and 15th positions respectively. Both Heidfeld and Button later said that they suffered from tyre problems during the session.
Completing the field, Kazuki Nakajima was 16th, Nelson Piquet Jr. 17th, Rubens Barrichello 18th, whilst the Force Indias of Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella brought up the rear of the grid in 19th and 20th positions. Piquet later complained that he was blocked during his first-session run by Vettel: "During my lap, Vettel was in front of me, which unsettled me a little, although the FIA felt that he did not impede me." Kovalainen was, however, penalized by the stewards and fined €5,000 for using a refuelling system during qualifying which had not been approved by the FIA.
Qualifying classification PosNoDriverConstructorPart 1Part 2Part 3Grid122 Lewis HamiltonMcLaren-Mercedes1:15.2181:14.6031:15.666122 Felipe MassaFerrari1:14.9211:14.7471:15.8592323 Heikki KovalainenMcLaren-Mercedes1:15.4761:14.8551:16.1433411 Jarno TrulliToyota1:15.5601:15.1221:16.191455 Fernando AlonsoRenault1:15.9171:14.9431:16.385561 Kimi RäikkönenFerrari1:15.2011:14.9491:16.389674 Robert KubicaBMW Sauber1:15.9851:15.1091:16.5217810 Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1:15.9001:15.4811:17.0148915 Sebastian VettelToro Rosso-Ferrari1:15.5321:15.4201:17.2449109 David CoulthardRed Bull-Renault1:15.9751:15.3381:17.503101112 Timo GlockToyota1:15.5601:15.50811123 Nick HeidfeldBMW Sauber1:15.5961:15.58112137 Nico RosbergWilliams-Toyota1:15.8631:15.633131416 Jenson ButtonHonda1:15.9931:15.701141514 Sébastien BourdaisToro Rosso-Ferrari1:15.9271:15.85815168 Kazuki NakajimaWilliams-Toyota1:16.08316176 Nelson Piquet Jr.Renault1:16.189171817 Rubens BarrichelloHonda1:16.246181920 Adrian SutilForce India-Ferrari1:16.657192021 Giancarlo FisichellaForce India-Ferrari1:16.96320Source:
Race
At the start, Hamilton, Massa and Kovalainen all maintained their grid positions. Hamilton quickly began to pull away from the other cars, at the rate of about half a second per lap. Behind the leading trio, Kubica passed Räikkönen off the grid, and went on to pass both Alonso and Trulli at the hairpin (turn 4), when Alonso's own attempted pass on Trulli delayed both drivers. The fight for fourth position continued in the early stages of the race. Kubica ran wide at the final corner on lap four, impeding Trulli and therefore allowing Alonso to attempt an overtaking manoeuvre on the Toyota down the main straight. However, Trulli held on to his position, and Alonso was instead passed by Räikkönen, moving him down to sixth position. At the back of the field, Nakajima spun his Williams but recovered back onto the track and continued in the race.
At the first round of pit stops, Hamilton had a lead of nearly 20 seconds over Massa, and fuelled longer than all the other drivers in the points-scoring positions when he pitted on lap 18. Coming out of the pits, Hamilton made an error and was passed by Trulli. The two drivers then nearly collided at the hairpin, with Hamilton holding back for the rest of the lap waiting for Trulli to pit. Trulli's teammate Glock stayed out on the track longer than all of the other drivers except Barrichello and Piquet, meaning that when he pitted, he was actually in third position and rejoined the race in eighth. Hamilton regained the lead by lap 22 after Massa, Kovalainen, Trulli and Räikkönen made their pit stops, and had in the region of an 11-second lead over Massa at the half-way stage of the race. Behind the leaders, fourth-placed Kubica was beginning to catch Kovalainen in third, while Trulli, Räikkönen, Alonso and Vettel battled over the final four point-scoring places.
On the 36th lap, Glock's right-rear suspension failed coming out of the final corner. He spun through 180 degrees before hitting the pit wall with a strong rearward impact, with debris flying across the track. The car, pointing the wrong way, rolled to a stop on the grass. A dazed Glock extracted himself before being treated at the medical centre. The safety car was deployed after the accident. When the pit lane opened on lap 38, most drivers headed in, including all of the leaders except Hamilton. McLaren believed that Hamilton had enough fuel to stay out, the plan being for him to then rapidly pull away from his heavily fuelled rivals, after the safety car went in. Hamilton needed to build up enough of a lead to rejoin still in first position, following his final pit stop. This would prove to be very risky, as Massa rejoined in fourth position, fuelled to the finish.