Fernando Alonso kept a cool head in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable and outduelled Felipe Massa to take his third victory of the season at the Nurburgring. In the process, he slashed McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s championship lead to just two points as the British rookie left Germany empty-handed after a nightmare weekend. A downpour of Biblical proportions halfway round the opening lap sent cars aquaplaning every which way and forced a safety car deployment and then a 20-minute red-flag stoppage. Massa led the majority of the race thereafter before the rain returned in the closing stages to set up a thrilling climax.
In the slippery conditions Alonso outclassed Massa, reeling him in and passing him audaciously with four and a half laps to go. Hamilton’s race was ruined by a puncture from first-lap contact, a spin in the early storm and an ill-timed switch to dry tyres, and he took the chequered flag in ninth place with no points to show for his unstinting efforts. The race started in dry conditions, Kimi Raikkonen getting away well from pole and Massa outdragging Alonso to the first corner to make it a Ferrari 1-2.
The BMWs followed in fourth and fifth, but Nick Heidfeld then tagged team-mate Robert Kubica at the exit of turn one and again, more heavily, in turn two. Hamilton, who had made a lightning start to move from 10th to sixth, got caught up in the melee and sustained a left-rear puncture, forcing him to nurse his McLaren back to the pits. Soon that drama paled into insignificance, however, as the threatening clouds deposited their contents and saturated the track surface. Raikkonen misjudged his braking point for the top chicane at the end of the opening lap and took that as his cue to come into the pits for intermediate tyres – only to repeat his error and overshoot the pit lane entry. He therefore had to complete another lap on dry tyres while the rest of the field dived in for intermediates.
But in the meantime the rain had been coming down in stair-rods and the inters proved hopelessly inadequate for the conditions. Jenson Button, Hamilton, Adrian Sutil and both Toro Rossos all aquaplaned off the flooded track under braking for turn one, while Vitantonio Liuzzi nearly collected the safety car – which had just been deployed – and a recovery vehicle.
In the midst of all this, debutant Markus Winkelhock, who had started from the pit lane on intermediates, incredibly took the lead in the unfancied Spyker – indeed, he completed the second lap with a 33s margin over Massa! But with six cars stranded in the run-off area at the first corner and those that were still going thrashing around like beached whales, officials sensibly ordered a red flag to suspend the race. Hamilton’s afternoon looked certain to be over, but remarkably he had kept his engine running throughout and was permitted a bump-start because his car was in a dangerous location. Moreover, the 2007 regulations allowed him to regain the lap he had lost while sitting in the gravel, meaning he would take the restart 17th and last – but, crucially, on the lead lap. The field was given several sighting laps under the safety car before the race got back underway in anger, and as Hamilton was waved past to join the back of the queue he was the only driver to get a feel for the conditions at something approaching racing speeds. Rather than counting his blessings that he was still in the race at all, Lewis then chose to gamble on a switch to dry-weather tyres. It was one of those decisions that just might have proved a masterstroke, but instead backfired and left him to spend the rest of the day in forlorn pursuit of points. The road was still much too wet for ’slicks’, as Hamilton discovered when he went off at the Dunlop hairpin on his out-lap. By lap 10 the lightly grooved tyres were the ones to have, but in the interim Lewis had lost great chunks of time and fallen a lap off the pace once more. Winkelhock’s taste of glory was brief and he soon tumbled down the order at the restart, leaving Massa in the lead from Alonso, the battling Red Bulls and Heikki Kovalainen’s Renault. Raikkonen was down in sixth after his lap one faux pas, but recovered three of his lost places by pitting for dry tyres a lap earlier than most others. Hamilton aside, Kimi was now the fastest man on the track and closed rapidly on Alonso, who was steadily losing touch with leader Massa. On lap 35 the hydraulics seized up and the disconsolate Finn pulled off by the side of the track, his renascent title chances having taken a major blow. Massa’s F2007 was going like a dream and Felipe pumped in a series of fastest laps to increase his cushion over Alonso to 11.4s ahead of the last scheduled pit stops. Mark Webber, Alex Wurz and Kovalainen were still hotly disputing third, fourth and fifth places, and Coulthard and the BMW pair were scrapping over sixth – but it seemed that the battle for the lead had been settled in Massa’s favour. Mother Nature had another twist in store, however, as the clouds darkened again in the closing stages in a sign that more rain was on the way. Renault was so convinced of this that it took the bold gamble of bringing fifth-placed Kovalainen in for intermediate tyres before the first drops had fallen. As with Hamilton’s early switch to dries, it didn’t pay off – this time because the rain didn’t arrive quite on cue and Heikki lost too much time nursing the inters on a bone-dry surface. The rain materialised three laps later, triggering another stampede on the pit lane. Alonso, who had already cut Massa’s lead substantially since the previous stops, proved much faster than the Brazilian on the wet track and was soon filling his mirrors, looking this way and that for a way past. Massa fended him off for the best part of two laps before the world champion showed his overtaking prowess with a virtuoso move around the outside of the fast, cambered turn five. The two cars momentarily banged wheels and after the race the pair exchanged words, but to most observers Alonso’s move was a fine piece of opportunism and the contact unintentional and (fortunately) inconsequential. Webber drove a strong race throughout and took a well-deserved second career podium finish, withstanding intense pressure from Wurz as he grappled with a tyre vibration in the last stint. The Williams driver was another to shine in the changeable conditions, and his second big points haul of the season moves him up to ninth place in the drivers’ standings. Coulthard capped Red Bull’s stellar day by finishing a strong fifth, having pulled away from the squabbling BMWs in the wet closing stages. Heidfeld took advantage of a late mistake by Kubica to snatch sixth, leaving the unfortunate Kovalainen to claim the final point for Renault.
