German Grand Prix driver ratings

6 NICO ROSBERG
Mercedes F1 W07

Start: 1st
Finish: 4th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft/super-soft)

Rating: 6

Rosberg's pole lap under intense pressure was outstanding. But once he picked up wheelspin at the start and slipped to fourth, his race unravelled and he couldn't gather it back together again.

The Verstappen move was asking for trouble and the penalty was hardly out of the blue, while his pace in the final stint chasing the Red Bulls was very underwhelming.

44 LEWIS HAMILTON
Mercedes F1 W07

Start: 2nd
Finish: 1st
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 8

He should have had a better run at pole position and his final flier was disappointing, although there were times when he looked not to have the better of Rosberg.

All of that changed at the start when he took the lead. From there, he was utterly in control. Not a perfect weekend or an especially challenging race, but still a fine performance.

5 SEBASTIAN VETTEL
Ferrari SF16-H

Start: 6th
Finish: 5th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 8

Vettel didn't get the best out of the Ferrari in qualifying and was outpaced by Raikkonen.

With Ferrari racing only for fifth and sixth, Vettel did a better job in the race by jumping ahead at the start and then carrying an 11-second advantage into the final lap, seven of which he lost after backing off when he clattered the Turn 1 exit kerb.

7 KIMI RAIKKONEN
Ferrari SF16-H

Start: 5th
Finish: 6th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 7

A decent weekend for Raikkonen, who outpaced Vettel during qualifying but slipped behind at the start.

After he lost a few more seconds at the first pitstop, there was no prospect of an intra-team battle and, ultimately, he was slightly flattered by the 4.5s final deficit to Vettel because of his team-mate's slow last lap. But he did what he needed to do to bank points.

19 FELIPE MASSA
Williams-Mercedes FW38

Start: 10th
Finish: DNF
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/soft/retired)

Rating: 4

Massa was less than a tenth off Bottas in qualifying, but had a poor race. After being clouted by Palmer's Renault on the opening lap, he struggled and slipped down the order before retiring.

The implication of the team's inability to find any physical evidence of a reason for his lack of pace is that the problem lay with the driver.

77 VALTTERI BOTTAS
Williams-Mercedes FW38

Start: 7th
Finish: 9th
Strategy: 2 stops (super-soft/soft/soft/)

Rating: 8

Bottas hustled the Williams impressively, but he really should have been faster than Hulkenberg in qualifying given the pace was in the car.

He drove well in the race, but was undone by a two-stop strategy that turned him into a sitting duck for the final six laps. That was the strategy's fault rather than Bottas's, and in the circumstances he did what he could.

3 DANIEL RICCIARDO
Red Bull-Renault RB12

Start: 3rd
Finish: 2nd
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 9

This was a very strong weekend from Ricciardo, who had a small but decisive advantage over Verstappen in terms of pace even though he spent just over half of the race behind after his team-mate swept around the outside of him at Turn 1.

Ricciardo's superior relative pace in the comparable final stint with both on super-softs and the qualifying gap showed the true picture.

33 MAX VERSTAPPEN
Red Bull-Renault RB12

Start: 4th
Finish: 3rd
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft/super-soft)

Rating: 7

Throughout the weekend, Verstappen looked to be having to work a little too hard on track to extract the pace from the car. While still quick, he wasn't as fast as Ricciardo and struggled on both tyre compounds in the race.

That a good but not great weekend is considered such a disappointment shows how far the young Dutchman has come.

11 SERGIO PEREZ
Force India-Mercedes VJM09

Start: 9th
Finish: 10th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 6

Perez's pace was much the same as that of team-mate Hulkenberg, as qualifying showed. In what he described as the worst start of his career, he wheelspun his way down to 16th off the line.

He perhaps made slightly heavier work of recovering than he might have done, but he at least picked off the ailing Alonso late on to nab a point.

27 Nico Hulkenberg
Force India-Mercedes VJM09

Start: 8th
Finish: 7th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 8

A strong all-round performance for Hullkenberg, who shaded Perez in qualifying then delivered the best possible result in the race. That included passing the struggling Bottas for seventh late on as Hulkenberg executed his strategy, initially a two-stopper converted to a three-stopper.

But he probably didn't quite have the race pace to defeat Bottas had Williams not got the strategy wrong.

20 KEVIN MAGNUSSEN
Renault RS16

Start: 16th
Finish: 16th
Strategy: 2 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 6

Magnussen lost out to Palmer in qualifying, but made a better fist of the race. He pulled off some nice passes when the opportunity presented itself, and probably finished in much the position he should have done, between the Toro Rossos and Wehrlein's Manor.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of his drive was that he made a two-stopper work, running the second half of the race on a set of softs and keeping them alive.

30 JOLYON PALMER
Renault RS16

Start: 14th
Finish: 19th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 6

The weekend went well until he locked up and flat-spotted his tyres at Turn 2 on the first lap. Having made it to Q2 for the first time since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix by outpacing Magnussen by just under a tenth, hopes were high.

But he then clouted Massa at Turn 6 and suffered front wing damage. The good work was undone by an untidy first lap.

26 DANIIL KVYAT
Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11

Start: 18th
Finish: 15th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 7

Kvyat looked to be roaming aimlessly in the wilderness in dire need of the August break after qualifying. He had no excuse for failing to escape Q1 after lapping 0.559s off Sainz and seemed a broken man.

To his credit, his performance was much stronger in the race, although few noticed his pace was much the same as Sainz's once the strategies had played out. A good recovery.

55 CARLOS SAINZ JR
Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11

Start: 15th
Finish: 14th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft/super-soft)

Rating: 8

The 2015-spec Ferrari engine made life very difficult even for a heavily-updated Toro Rosso, and Sainz did about what could have been expected.

A grid penalty for impeding didn't help, but a good start and some incisive passes early on might have put him into contention for an unlikely point before a slow stop dropped him back.

9 MARCUS ERICSSON
Sauber-Ferrari C35

Start: 22nd
Finish: 18th
Strategy: 2 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft)

Rating: 7

Judged purely on qualifying, you'd say Ericsson was very much the number two Sauber driver. Judged on Sunday, you'd say he was the lead one - although you could argue that he had the machinery to beat Wehrlein in the race rather than being just under nine seconds behind.

But it was certainly a decent enough performance, and overall he shaded Nasr.

12 FELIPE NASR
Sauber-Ferrari C35

Start: 21st
Finish: DNF
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft/soft)

Rating: 6

The positives: Nasr was the faster Sauber driver in qualifying by just over a tenth, he made a great start to jump to 17th and showed decent pace at times in the race.

The negatives: he seemed to go through his tyres quicker than Ericsson and slipped back to run last at one point. Eventually, he retired with an engine problem while running 20th, ahead only of Haryanto.

14 FERNANDO ALONSO
McLaren-Honda MP4-31

Start: 13th
Finish: 12th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 6

Traffic could legitimately be blamed for Alonso not quite matching Button in qualifying, but in the race he proved unable to make a very similar strategy work as well as his team-mate and fell out of the points late on amid fuel-saving and tyre concerns.

There was also a rare off at Turn 8, and the unusual sight of him getting mugged by Perez while being lapped.

22 JENSON BUTTON
McLaren-Honda MP4-31

Start: 12th
Finish: 8th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 9

Save for getting a fragment of carbon in his eye during Friday afternoon practice and having to go to hospital, a good weekend's work for Button.

He perhaps should have made a better fist of making Q3, but in the race he quickly hauled the car into the points and stayed there - faring better than his team-mate amid fuel and tyre concerns late on.

88 RIO HARYANTO
Manor-Mercedes MRT-05

Start: 19th
Finish: 20th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 5

Haryanto qualified just over a quarter of a second behind team-mate Wehrlein and might have been a little closer but for a slight mistake at Turn 8.

But he got too close in the race, with a poorly-conceived attempt to pass his team-mate at the hairpin early on giving him front wing damage. A subsequent nose change cost more time and he fell to a distant last.

94 PASCAL WEHRLEIN
Manor-Mercedes MRT-05

Start: 17th
Finish: 17th
Strategy: 3 stops (super-soft/super-soft/soft/soft)

Rating: 8

The German surprised even himself with a last-gap Q1 lap that almost got him into Q2. In the race he did his usual good job, keeping both the Saubers and Palmer's delayed Renault comfortably behind.

Magnussen was only nine seconds up the road, but it's difficult to see any way he could have beaten the Dane. A positive performance for speed and consistency.

8 ROMAIN GROSJEAN
Haas-Ferrari VF-16

Start: 20th
Finish: 13th
Strategy: 2 stops (super-soft/soft/super-soft)

Rating: 6

Grosjean had a troubled run through Friday and Saturday, including a couple of offs and a gearbox failure that led to a five-place grid drop and, as is often the case when the car balance isn't to his liking, he wasn't at his best in qualifying.

He had a reasonable race to 13th place, with his nine-place grid-position deficit to Gutierrez translating only into a nine-second gap at the finish.

21 ESTEBAN GUTIERREZ
Haas-Ferrari VF-16

Start: 11th
Finish: 11th
Strategy: 2 stops (soft/super-soft/super-soft)

Rating: 7

Gutierrez seemed more at ease with the car than his team-mate, and although there might have been a fraction more to be found in qualifying there wasn't enough on the table to do better than 11th.

He completed his two-stop strategy pretty well, blue flag complaints against him aside, to take 11th place, but never quite managed to haul himself into the battle for the points.