One of those people was Nico Rosberg who lost here to Lewis Hamilton in 2014 that coupled with it being his home track, he had more reasons than most to try and take first here.
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Hamilton’s success at Hockenheim on Sunday, the 49th victory of his F1 career, was attained with relative ease after passing slow-away polesitter Rosberg – who eventually finished fourth – on the run to the first corner.
“Without the penalty I was in front, I was running second so it’s the penalty that cost me definitely but yesterday they were running good pace”. Now the pendulum has swung Lewis’ way – and it’s pretty much a battle between the Mercedes pair, again – who’s your tip for the title, Lewis or Nico?
Where did it go wrong for Rosberg?
He sat out the penalty on his third pit stop but the team appeared to have kept him behind for longer than the five seconds.
As for Rosberg, he was convinced the five-second penalty cost him second place: “I was very surprised to get the penalty”. I think this is why he’s not winning every single race. “I was enjoying it. We chose to do two different strategies and double podium is great for the team”.
“Today I didn’t make any mistakes”, added the Englishman Hamilton, before being quizzed about the huge change in his demeanour.
Sebastian Vettel was fifth on his first appearance in Ferrari colors on home soil, crossing the line 32.5 seconds adrift of Hamilton, with Finnish teammate Kimi Raikkonen capping a disappointing weekend for the Italian team in sixth.
“We could have counted, one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, but we relied on the stopwatch, and it let us down”.
And with nine rounds remaining, Hamilton, whose early part of his season was fraught with vehicle issues, will now be the overwhelming favourite to win his fourth title. I had a lot of wheel spin at the start, that was unusual, because my start during the formation lap was good.
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The 31-year-old English driver heads into the holiday break with 217 points before racing resumes toward the end of August at the Belgian circuit of Spa-Francorchamps. “I’m very, very happy with that, but I’m conscious there’s going to be at least one more race where I’m further behind, and I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to limit the damage”.
