The Mercedes driver lit up the German GP with his charge from 20th to third. EDD STRAW explains how he pulled off the recovery, and why Hamilton had reason to be kicking himself as he celebrated third place
Lewis Hamilton wasn't sure how to respond when asked whether he saw the metaphorical glass of his German Grand Prix charge from 20th on the grid to third as half-full or half-empty.
"Well, I don't really know how to answer that," he admitted. "I came from last, so to get on the podium is quite an achievement, so perhaps half-full."
Making up 17 places, even in the best car, is no mean feat, so perhaps the Mercedes driver was right to look on the positive side. But while there was nothing he could have done to prevent his right-front brake disc failing early in qualifying, pitching him into the Sachskurve tyre barrier, Hamilton knew that he really should have finished second.
If he loses the world championship to Nico Rosberg by three points or fewer, he will rue the clash with Jenson Button that almost certainly prevented a Mercedes one-two.
Hamilton knew just how close he had come to performing the perfect damage-limitation job.
THE EARLY CHARGE
Hamilton was one of only three drivers, along with Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, who opted to start on the soft-compound Pirellis rather than the super-softs. This meant he would run longer than most in the first stint, making the first 20 laps of the race critical to his hopes of challenging for the podium.
The first corner madness cleared some ground for Hamilton © XPB |
A combination of an unremarkable start and the almost immediate deployment of the safety car, thanks to Felipe Massa's Williams - which had started third - rolling at the first corner after clashing with Kevin Magnussen's McLaren, meant Hamilton gained little at the start and was running 17th when the race was restarted.
Although he had jumped Jules Bianchi immediately, due to the Frenchman's Marussia barely moving when the red lights went out, and got ahead of Kamui Kobayashi's Caterham too, he also lost a place to Max Chilton. Picking up places from Massa and Magnussen was a given, so in those early seconds of the race Hamilton really only made up one place on track. This made the early laps of the restart doubly important.
When the race got back under way on lap three, he immediately passed Chilton into Turn 2 for 16th. A lap later, Pastor Maldonado was effortlessly dispatched at the same corner for 15th. Next time around, he dived past Grosjean at Turn 1 and easily cleared Esteban Gutierrez when the Sauber driver locked up on the outside line at the hairpin.
Now in 13th, Hamilton was behind the first of the serious runners, the delayed Daniel Ricciardo, who had dropped down the order avoiding the first-corner shunt. Fortunately for Hamilton, Ricciardo was not hanging around and soon passed Adrian Sutil's Sauber, with Hamilton having his first dicey moment of the race when he ambushed the German at the hairpin. Contact was made, but Sutil noticed his old Formula 3 team-mate just in time to take some evasive action, meaning the impact was harmless. Twelfth.
The two Toro Rossos were next, with Daniil Kvyat helpfully removing himself from the equation by attempting to go around the outside of Sergio Perez's Force India at the Turn 8 left-hander and turning in on the Mexican, who had no way to avoid tipping him into a spin. Jean-Eric Vergne was dealt with on the next lap. Hamilton was into the points in 10th.
CLIMBING THE TOP 10
By now, Hamilton was in among what might be considered the more serious competition. Ricciardo, who had been picking up places ahead of him, was now becoming a problem.
Hamilton gets together with Raikkonen as both chase Perez © LAT |
Hamilton appeared to have got the Red Bull at the hairpin on lap 10 but, with Raikkonen in the way on the inside line defending against the Australian, Hamilton had to back out of it. A few corners later, at Turn 8, Ricciardo completed a superb move on Raikkonen, with the Finn managing to keep Hamilton behind after hanging on around the outside of the Mercedes at the fast right-hander leading into the stadium section.
Hamilton couldn't afford to waste too much time behind the pair. He saw his chance on lap 13, when Raikkonen attacked Ricciardo into the hairpin. Hamilton went to the inside of both, with Raikkonen squeezed in the middle, and a small lock-up from Hamilton meant that he clipped the edge of the Ferrari's front wing as he went through.
The Mercedes suffered no damage, unlike Raikkonen, and Hamilton's high-risk strategy had paid off. With fourth-placed Fernando Alonso pitting at the end of that lap, Hamilton was now up to seventh.
Button pitted at the end of the 13th lap and an easy move up the inside of Perez at the hairpin put Hamilton fifth. This became third when Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg stopped from third and fourth respectively at the end of the lap, and second at the end of lap 15 when Valtteri Bottas pitted.
Hamilton's progress had been rapid, but not rapid enough to be able to take the lead when team-mate Rosberg, who had been controlling the race after dropping Bottas at the restart, pitted at the end of lap 15.
During that phase, the closest Hamilton got to Rosberg was seven and a half seconds down. Because of the need to extend his first stint, ideally in the hope of being able to complete the race on only two stops, the gap had increased almost threefold by the time Hamilton came in at the end of lap 26, shortly after he allowed Bottas, on fresher rubber, to pass him at the hairpin unopposed.
After all, as Hamilton had been told over the radio, "you are forecast P2, even if Bottas overtakes". The hard work was done.
A COSTLY MISJUDGEMENT
Hamilton, out of synch with the rest of the leading contenders, re-emerged eighth and was keen not to lose time behind slower cars. On lap 29 he attacked Ricciardo into the hairpin, but couldn't make the move stick until the Turn 8 left-hander. That put him seventh and closing on Button.
Button wasn't impressed with Hamilton's move, though he later toned his criticisms down © LAT |
After gaining on the McLaren in the DRS zone, Hamilton made his move to the inside at the hairpin, mistaking Button's wide entry as an invitation to go through.
Button turned in, Hamilton couldn't hold as tight a line as he needed to, and his front-left wheel - and crucially the endplate of his front wing - clipped the sidepod of the McLaren.
"I honestly thought he was opening the door to let me past," said Hamilton. "He's been a bit like that before, in the past race, for example, so my bad judgement there."
Button was puzzled by Hamilton's assumption of cooperation.
"Why would we let anyone through?" asked Button when asked about the incident after the race. "I think the problem with Lewis is he expected me to let him past. I don't think I'm the only person he drove into today. It's strange, when the car is so much quicker, you'd think he wouldn't get into so many fights, but there you go."
Button did later tone down his comments having seen the footage of the incident, saying via Twitter: "I overreacted with my feelings about Lewis's move. I can understand why he thought I was giving him room".
While Hamilton escaped his brushes with Sutil and Raikkonen, he paid the price for this one. It was hardly a terrible misjudgement, but it was a costly one. Not only did the damage cost him downforce and therefore a few tenths per lap, but it upset the balance of the car and put more stress on the front tyres, particularly the troublesome front-left.
During practice, sky-high track temperatures meant that the rears were the concern, but cooler conditions on race day put more strain on the fronts. So from this moment, the two-stop plan was in jeopardy. As Hamilton himself put it, the car certainly felt "different" after the clash.
Consideration was given to changing his front wing at the next pitstop, but the team calculated this would cost more time than it gained.
"We had precise data on what the nose was looking like and how it was performing," explained Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff. "We were very much aware that there wasn't any structural damage on the front wing, just the front-wing endplate and some of the fins. The front wing was not deteriorating any further and we decided to keep it on."
PROGRESS SLOWED
Up front and unchallenged, Rosberg was having no trouble making a two-stop strategy work © XPB |
Hamilton was still quick enough to make progress and consolidate his podium position. He passed Button cleanly - with a wave of the hand, in the DRS zone on the run to the hairpin, a lap after their clash. And he dispatched Hulkenberg for fifth a lap later.
Stops for Alonso, then Vettel and finally Bottas put Hamilton up to second on lap 41. But the front-left tyre was not doing well and, after he complained about its condition over the radio, the team had to make the decision to abandon the two-stopper and bring him in early.
While the first stint on softs had been 26 laps, Hamilton managed just 16 on his second. The only thing Mercedes could do was split the remaining 25 laps into two attacking stints on super-softs.
Bottas was always going to be the problem. Like runaway leader Rosberg (remember him?), the Williams driver was one of the few to be on a successful two-stopper. Earlier in the race, Hamilton was on target for second but, while he was still expected to catch Bottas, the situation was not so clear-cut.
SAFETY CAR SURPRISE
Hamilton rejoined fifth, taking fourth when Vettel made his final stop on lap 45 and then using the DRS to breeze past Alonso on the run to Turn 6 to take third on lap 49.
But with Sutil spinning at the last corner as a result of the engine cutting, leaving the Sauber abandoned in the middle of the track at the exit, Mercedes had no choice but to cut short the first of Hamilton's final two stints and call him in.
The penalty in terms of track position had he pitted after the inevitable safety car would be too much to take. But, to the surprise of almost everyone, there was no safety car, with marshals eventually sent running across the track to retrieve the car.
This strange decision from race control meant that Hamilton had to be a little cautious in the final 17-lap stint. He re-emerged in fourth, and regained third from Alonso on lap 55, just before the Ferrari pitted. But the real battle was with Bottas, who had been 16 and a half seconds up the road after Hamilton made his final stop.
Mercedes, like many in the pitlane, expected a safety car for Sutil's incident © LAT |
Williams had held firm in its decision to stick with a two-stopper, with Bottas reporting earlier in the stint that he suspected the tyres would hold up. But he had to take it easy.
At times, Hamilton was over two seconds faster than Bottas, and the gap was eliminated by the end of lap 60. But in the remaining seven laps Hamilton could not pass.
Not only had the switch to a three-stopper and the early final stop to cover the safety car that never appeared cost Hamilton but, as Williams engineering chief Rob Smedley explained, it was now making it easier for Bottas to stay ahead. On the pitwall, the strategy for using the available hybrid engine power was spot on from Williams, and Bottas drove immaculately to prevent Hamilton from attacking.
While the Mercedes-powered Williams was seriously fast on the straight, that doesn't mean that what Bottas did was easy. But Hamilton's wing damage also made it more straightforward for Williams to hold its nerve and not switch to a three-stopper.
"Absolutely no doubt," said Smedley of how Hamilton's front-wing damage helped Bottas stay ahead.
"Part of catching and passing a car is you need a really good front end to follow it through a corner. This is a nightmare if you don't have that, you just won't be able to get close enough to pass them. We took that into account, had that intelligence, and it worked."
In the end, Hamilton missed out on the perfect comeback drive by just under two seconds. It could have been much worse, but it might also have been slightly better.
And with Rosberg extending his world championship lead by 10 points with an effortless win, that explains why, for all his virtuosity in the race, a driver who had just made up 17 places during a grand prix looked far from ecstatic on the podium.
The Mercedes driver lit up the German GP with his charge from 20th to third. EDD STRAW explains how he pulled off the recovery, and why Hamilton had reason to be kicking himself as he celebrated third place
Lewis Hamilton wasn't sure how to respond when asked whether he saw the metaphorical glass of his German Grand Prix charge from 20th on the grid to third as half-full or half-empty.
"Well, I don't really know how to answer that," he admitted. "I came from last, so to get on the podium is quite an achievement, so perhaps half-full."
Making up 17 places, even in the best car, is no mean feat, so perhaps the Mercedes driver was right to look on the positive side. But while there was nothing he could have done to prevent his right-front brake disc failing early in qualifying, pitching him into the Sachskurve tyre barrier, Hamilton knew that he really should have finished second.
If he loses the world championship to Nico Rosberg by three points or fewer, he will rue the clash with Jenson Button that almost certainly prevented a Mercedes one-two.
Hamilton knew just how close he had come to performing the perfect damage-limitation job.
THE EARLY CHARGE
Hamilton was one of only three drivers, along with Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, who opted to start on the soft-compound Pirellis rather than the super-softs. This meant he would run longer than most in the first stint, making the first 20 laps of the race critical to his hopes of challenging for the podium.
The first corner madness cleared some ground for Hamilton © XPB |
A combination of an unremarkable start and the almost immediate deployment of the safety car, thanks to Felipe Massa's Williams - which had started third - rolling at the first corner after clashing with Kevin Magnussen's McLaren, meant Hamilton gained little at the start and was running 17th when the race was restarted.
Although he had jumped Jules Bianchi immediately, due to the Frenchman's Marussia barely moving when the red lights went out, and got ahead of Kamui Kobayashi's Caterham too, he also lost a place to Max Chilton. Picking up places from Massa and Magnussen was a given, so in those early seconds of the race Hamilton really only made up one place on track. This made the early laps of the restart doubly important.
When the race got back under way on lap three, he immediately passed Chilton into Turn 2 for 16th. A lap later, Pastor Maldonado was effortlessly dispatched at the same corner for 15th. Next time around, he dived past Grosjean at Turn 1 and easily cleared Esteban Gutierrez when the Sauber driver locked up on the outside line at the hairpin.
Now in 13th, Hamilton was behind the first of the serious runners, the delayed Daniel Ricciardo, who had dropped down the order avoiding the first-corner shunt. Fortunately for Hamilton, Ricciardo was not hanging around and soon passed Adrian Sutil's Sauber, with Hamilton having his first dicey moment of the race when he ambushed the German at the hairpin. Contact was made, but Sutil noticed his old Formula 3 team-mate just in time to take some evasive action, meaning the impact was harmless. Twelfth.
The two Toro Rossos were next, with Daniil Kvyat helpfully removing himself from the equation by attempting to go around the outside of Sergio Perez's Force India at the Turn 8 left-hander and turning in on the Mexican, who had no way to avoid tipping him into a spin. Jean-Eric Vergne was dealt with on the next lap. Hamilton was into the points in 10th.
CLIMBING THE TOP 10
By now, Hamilton was in among what might be considered the more serious competition. Ricciardo, who had been picking up places ahead of him, was now becoming a problem.
Hamilton gets together with Raikkonen as both chase Perez © LAT |
Hamilton appeared to have got the Red Bull at the hairpin on lap 10 but, with Raikkonen in the way on the inside line defending against the Australian, Hamilton had to back out of it. A few corners later, at Turn 8, Ricciardo completed a superb move on Raikkonen, with the Finn managing to keep Hamilton behind after hanging on around the outside of the Mercedes at the fast right-hander leading into the stadium section.
Hamilton couldn't afford to waste too much time behind the pair. He saw his chance on lap 13, when Raikkonen attacked Ricciardo into the hairpin. Hamilton went to the inside of both, with Raikkonen squeezed in the middle, and a small lock-up from Hamilton meant that he clipped the edge of the Ferrari's front wing as he went through.
The Mercedes suffered no damage, unlike Raikkonen, and Hamilton's high-risk strategy had paid off. With fourth-placed Fernando Alonso pitting at the end of that lap, Hamilton was now up to seventh.
Button pitted at the end of the 13th lap and an easy move up the inside of Perez at the hairpin put Hamilton fifth. This became third when Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg stopped from third and fourth respectively at the end of the lap, and second at the end of lap 15 when Valtteri Bottas pitted.
Hamilton's progress had been rapid, but not rapid enough to be able to take the lead when team-mate Rosberg, who had been controlling the race after dropping Bottas at the restart, pitted at the end of lap 15.
During that phase, the closest Hamilton got to Rosberg was seven and a half seconds down. Because of the need to extend his first stint, ideally in the hope of being able to complete the race on only two stops, the gap had increased almost threefold by the time Hamilton came in at the end of lap 26, shortly after he allowed Bottas, on fresher rubber, to pass him at the hairpin unopposed.
After all, as Hamilton had been told over the radio, "you are forecast P2, even if Bottas overtakes". The hard work was done.
A COSTLY MISJUDGEMENT
Hamilton, out of synch with the rest of the leading contenders, re-emerged eighth and was keen not to lose time behind slower cars. On lap 29 he attacked Ricciardo into the hairpin, but couldn't make the move stick until the Turn 8 left-hander. That put him seventh and closing on Button.
Button wasn't impressed with Hamilton's move, though he later toned his criticisms down © LAT |
After gaining on the McLaren in the DRS zone, Hamilton made his move to the inside at the hairpin, mistaking Button's wide entry as an invitation to go through.
Button turned in, Hamilton couldn't hold as tight a line as he needed to, and his front-left wheel - and crucially the endplate of his front wing - clipped the sidepod of the McLaren.
"I honestly thought he was opening the door to let me past," said Hamilton. "He's been a bit like that before, in the past race, for example, so my bad judgement there."
Button was puzzled by Hamilton's assumption of cooperation.
"Why would we let anyone through?" asked Button when asked about the incident after the race. "I think the problem with Lewis is he expected me to let him past. I don't think I'm the only person he drove into today. It's strange, when the car is so much quicker, you'd think he wouldn't get into so many fights, but there you go."
Button did later tone down his comments having seen the footage of the incident, saying via Twitter: "I overreacted with my feelings about Lewis's move. I can understand why he thought I was giving him room".
While Hamilton escaped his brushes with Sutil and Raikkonen, he paid the price for this one. It was hardly a terrible misjudgement, but it was a costly one. Not only did the damage cost him downforce and therefore a few tenths per lap, but it upset the balance of the car and put more stress on the front tyres, particularly the troublesome front-left.
During practice, sky-high track temperatures meant that the rears were the concern, but cooler conditions on race day put more strain on the fronts. So from this moment, the two-stop plan was in jeopardy. As Hamilton himself put it, the car certainly felt "different" after the clash.
Consideration was given to changing his front wing at the next pitstop, but the team calculated this would cost more time than it gained.
"We had precise data on what the nose was looking like and how it was performing," explained Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff. "We were very much aware that there wasn't any structural damage on the front wing, just the front-wing endplate and some of the fins. The front wing was not deteriorating any further and we decided to keep it on."
PROGRESS SLOWED
Up front and unchallenged, Rosberg was having no trouble making a two-stop strategy work © XPB |
Hamilton was still quick enough to make progress and consolidate his podium position. He passed Button cleanly - with a wave of the hand, in the DRS zone on the run to the hairpin, a lap after their clash. And he dispatched Hulkenberg for fifth a lap later.
Stops for Alonso, then Vettel and finally Bottas put Hamilton up to second on lap 41. But the front-left tyre was not doing well and, after he complained about its condition over the radio, the team had to make the decision to abandon the two-stopper and bring him in early.
While the first stint on softs had been 26 laps, Hamilton managed just 16 on his second. The only thing Mercedes could do was split the remaining 25 laps into two attacking stints on super-softs.
Bottas was always going to be the problem. Like runaway leader Rosberg (remember him?), the Williams driver was one of the few to be on a successful two-stopper. Earlier in the race, Hamilton was on target for second but, while he was still expected to catch Bottas, the situation was not so clear-cut.
SAFETY CAR SURPRISE
Hamilton rejoined fifth, taking fourth when Vettel made his final stop on lap 45 and then using the DRS to breeze past Alonso on the run to Turn 6 to take third on lap 49.
But with Sutil spinning at the last corner as a result of the engine cutting, leaving the Sauber abandoned in the middle of the track at the exit, Mercedes had no choice but to cut short the first of Hamilton's final two stints and call him in.
The penalty in terms of track position had he pitted after the inevitable safety car would be too much to take. But, to the surprise of almost everyone, there was no safety car, with marshals eventually sent running across the track to retrieve the car.
This strange decision from race control meant that Hamilton had to be a little cautious in the final 17-lap stint. He re-emerged in fourth, and regained third from Alonso on lap 55, just before the Ferrari pitted. But the real battle was with Bottas, who had been 16 and a half seconds up the road after Hamilton made his final stop.
Mercedes, like many in the pitlane, expected a safety car for Sutil's incident © LAT |
Williams had held firm in its decision to stick with a two-stopper, with Bottas reporting earlier in the stint that he suspected the tyres would hold up. But he had to take it easy.
At times, Hamilton was over two seconds faster than Bottas, and the gap was eliminated by the end of lap 60. But in the remaining seven laps Hamilton could not pass.
Not only had the switch to a three-stopper and the early final stop to cover the safety car that never appeared cost Hamilton but, as Williams engineering chief Rob Smedley explained, it was now making it easier for Bottas to stay ahead. On the pitwall, the strategy for using the available hybrid engine power was spot on from Williams, and Bottas drove immaculately to prevent Hamilton from attacking.
While the Mercedes-powered Williams was seriously fast on the straight, that doesn't mean that what Bottas did was easy. But Hamilton's wing damage also made it more straightforward for Williams to hold its nerve and not switch to a three-stopper.
"Absolutely no doubt," said Smedley of how Hamilton's front-wing damage helped Bottas stay ahead.
"Part of catching and passing a car is you need a really good front end to follow it through a corner. This is a nightmare if you don't have that, you just won't be able to get close enough to pass them. We took that into account, had that intelligence, and it worked."
In the end, Hamilton missed out on the perfect comeback drive by just under two seconds. It could have been much worse, but it might also have been slightly better.
And with Rosberg extending his world championship lead by 10 points with an effortless win, that explains why, for all his virtuosity in the race, a driver who had just made up 17 places during a grand prix looked far from ecstatic on the podium.
