How German GP climax could've been even bigger shock

The German Grand Prix was one of those rare, delicious blends of chaos, virtuoso driving, wheel-to-wheel action, mistakes and constant make-or-break strategy decisions that had the Hockenheim crowd on its feet and overwhelming the noise of the cars with their cheers time and time again.

Five drivers could realistically claim this should have been their weekend - with a few feisty midfielders legitimately able to suggest that they could have been contenders with the right breaks - but it was Red Bull's Max Verstappen who delivered a classic, old-school 'spin and win' triumph.

One of those unfortunate drivers who missed out, Lewis Hamilton, summed it up perfectly as "like snakes and ladders". Few left Hockenheim without hitting at least a snake or two, but none more so than Mercedes, which converted a potential one-two into a ninth place and some crunched 125 years celebratory bodywork on what team boss Toto Wolff described as an "armageddon weekend".

Valtteri Bottas squandered the chance he's been waiting for to slash Hamilton's world championship lead, while both Ferrari drivers struck snakes even before the race started.

It was that kind of weekend. And it was all the more wonderful for it. Amid the chaos, there were multiple clear phases where one driver or another had, or appeared to have, the initiative.

Phase 1 - Advantage Ferrari

Heading into Saturday afternoon's dry qualifying, Charles Leclerc was favourite for pole position. Ferrari had set the pace throughout free practice, with Leclerc looking the quicker. Fears that the sweltering conditions on Friday might have created a misleading picture were allayed by the pace of the red machines in Saturday's one-hour practice session.

Ferrari hit its first snake early in Q1 when Sebastian Vettel, on his out-lap, detected what proved to be an intercooler failure as he shifted up to fourth gear for the first time. He returned to the garage and did not reappear.

Leclerc cruised through to Q3 and seemed certain to take his third Formula 1 pole position. But a failure of the fuel system control module also left him stranded in the garage while the other nine Q3 qualifiers fought it out for pole.

With Vettel 20th and Leclerc 10th on the grid, and Hamilton fighting off illness to take an unexpected pole, victory had seemingly slipped from Ferrari's grasp.

Phase 2 - Advantage Hamilton

With steady rain in the hours before the race making full wet Pirellis the starting tyres of choice, there was the tantalising prospect of Hamilton, winner of the previous nine rain-affected grands prix, going toe-to-toe with fellow front-row starter and rainmeister Verstappen. But the start, delayed by four formation laps behind the safety car, ensured they were immediately separated.

Hamilton led Bottas, while Verstappen slipped to fourth behind Alfa Romeo's Kimi Raikkonen, who had started fifth. This was thanks to both Verstappen and Pierre Gasly, who found himself down to eighth place, picking up huge amounts of wheelspin off the line thanks to what was later described by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner as a "mapping issue".

By the end of the first lap, Hamilton was 1.9 seconds clear of Bottas, with Verstappen almost five seconds down and still looking for a way past Raikkonen. He didn't have to look too hard, as on the second lap Raikkonen slid deep at the Turn 6 hairpin and left the door wide open for Verstappen.

As Verstappen set about closing on the Mercedes drivers, Sergio Perez intervened. Having qualified the heavily-upgraded Racing Point eighth, he slipped to 11th before spinning into the inside barrier at the exit of the Turn 10 right-hander on lap two. That brought out the safety car.

The majority of the field pitted for intermediates, with Vettel, having quickly climbed from the back of the grid to 12th, and the 15th-placed Toro Rosso of Alex Albon both coming in immediately. Next time round, much of the rest of the field stopped - including the top seven - promoting Haas driver Kevin Magnussen to second between the two Mercedes drivers.

Wet-shod Magnussen quickly plummeted out of contention and then pitted for intermediates, leaving Hamilton and Bottas first and second. Hamilton, with the advantage of clear track on top of his wet-weather virtuosity, dropped Bottas at a rate of 0.377s per lap from laps five to 14.

At this point, Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo, who had spent the first part of the race scrapping outside the points, had his chances expire in a cloud of smoke with an exhaust failure and led to the intervention of the virtual safety car.

Crucially, Leclerc, who had worked his way up to sixth at the start of the race then jumped Nico Hulkenberg and Raikkonen in the pits to run fourth, took the chance offered by the VSC to pit for new intermediates without losing a place. Leclerc himself made the call, realising he could do so without losing track position. The only other driver to do this was fifth-placed Hulkenberg, who lost just one spot to Raikkonen after being given the latest of calls by the pitwall.

At that point, Hamilton was 4.8s clear of Bottas, who had Verstappen pressuring him. Once the VSC cleared, Hamilton returned to pulling away and from laps 17-25 was 0.38s quicker than Bottas. Verstappen had to be satisfied with holding station behind Bottas, at one stage suffering a big rear end snap at the Turn 6 hairpin that cost him time but otherwise looking threatening.

With Hamilton in the clear, Red Bull decided to force the issue in the battle with Bottas. Verstappen pitted at the end of lap 25 to take on slick mediums, a move replicated a lap later by Bottas.

Verstappen was furious at being put on medium Pirellis rather than the more obvious softs and squandered his chance of jumping Bottas when he spun in the stadium section. But he gathered it up quickly, so was back on Bottas's tail when the Mercedes emerged from the pits.

But what followed briefly threatened to turn the race on its head thanks to Leclerc's earlier stop.

Phase 3 - Leclerc in contention

Leclerc had used his fresh intermediates to good effect. In his first eight complete laps of that stint he was the fastest driver on circuit by a second per lap to close to just three seconds behind Verstappen.

He ran two laps longer than Verstappen and a lap further than Bottas to jump both, pitting at the end of lap 27 for softs. He was helped by the VSC being deployed while he was in the pitlane before he pulled into the pitbox, reducing the time lost.

The VSC was deployed because Lando Norris's McLaren had ground to a halt when he lost power shortly after pitting from 13th place, combined with several other spinners. This looked helpful for Hamilton, who came in at the end of lap 28 for softs, but the green flag was thrown just as the Mercedes entered the speed-limit controlled part of the pitlane. Trouble getting the front-right tyre off cost Hamilton another 2-3s, allowing Leclerc to gain more time.

While he was never going to jump Hamilton, he would have been closer than his unpromising starting position suggested he might get and the leader would have been in sight.

But on softs that had lost temperature under the VSC, the rear end got away from Leclerc as he tiptoed into the penultimate corner.

He attempted to correct with two armfuls of opposite lock, but once onto the slicked-up surface of the start of Hockenheim's drag strip that is used as the runoff he then understeered into the gravel and then the wall.

After a fruitless attempt to dig himself out, he had a lengthy swear over the radio, berated himself, apologised to the team then denounced the ultra low-grip runoff as "dangerous" before climbing out of the car.

Phase 4 - Advantage Verstappen

With Leclerc out of the way, the path was seemingly clear for Hamilton. The safety car was deployed because of Leclerc's off, only for Hamilton to find a snake of his own moments after declaring the soft slicks he was on "risky" thanks to returning rain. While cruising, the rear got away from Hamilton at the same point as Leclerc and he slid into the wall just a few metres forward of the stricken Ferrari.

Unlike Leclerc, Hamilton was able to get the Mercedes out of the gravel and, thanks to front wing damage, he headed straight into the pits. Crucially, he passed to the left side of the pitlane marker bollard, which later earned him a five-second penalty.

This unexpected visit was not well-timed, as the Mercedes team had just called Bottas in for another stop two laps after his last following a debate about whether to switch back to inters or change to softs. Fortunately, by coincidence Bottas saved himself from queueing behind Hamilton thanks to overruling the team's call, saying "I don't want to lose track position, so I'm not boxing".

It took a long time for Hamilton to be sent back out, now on intermediates after being stopped for almost 50s longer than a regular stop, meaning he dropped to fifth. The confusion of Hamilton's sudden stop was perhaps multiplied by the team not hearing Hamilton's message about the front wing clearly as it was delivered just as race engineer Pete 'Bono' Bonnington responded to confirm they had heard him saying he would box.

That left Verstappen in the lead ahead of Hulkenberg, who had deferred his stop until the safety car and avoided falling into the slick trap that led to Verstappen and Bottas having to make additional stops to return to intermediates.

He had Bottas and Alexander Albon behind him, with Hamilton ahead of sixth-placed Carlos Sainz Jr's McLaren - who had earlier looked to be out of the points hunt having slipped down to 14th after his own last-corner off, but who also made a perfectly-judged call to take fresh intermediates rather than slicks during the recent flurry of pitstops.

Verstappen made hay during the next phase of green-flag running, from laps 34-40 setting a pace just over a second faster than anyone else. Bottas took too long to get past Hulkenberg, eventually taking second on lap 37 by which time he was 8.7s behind the Red Bull. Hamilton quickly dispatched Albon then Hulkenberg to move up to third before the Renault driver caused the next reshaping of the race.

Hulkenberg, chasing a first F1 podium finish at the 167th attempt, became the latest to make the same error as Sainz, Leclerc and Hamilton. It wasn't so serious, and he was able to get the car turned in roughly the right direction only to then be hit by the agonising lack of grip on the densely-laid and slicked up rubber as he, quite naturally, got back on the throttle having seemingly corrected the moment. Hitting the brakes doomed him and he slid agonisingly into the wall and retirement.

Cue another safety car, this time allowing Verstappen to pit for fresh intermediates at the end of lap 41 without losing the lead - a trick Vettel, who had climbed up to seventh place, also pulled but at a cost of of three places. As the endgame approached, Verstappen's lead had once again been wiped out by the safety car.

Phase 5 - Bottas's big chance

Under the safety car, Bottas was told his best chance of getting ahead of Verstappen was at the restart. Sadly for him, Verstappen made a perfect job of it and already had 1.6s in hand over the start finish line. Bottas had team-mate Hamilton behind him but knew his team-mate had a five-second penalty to serve at his next pitstop for the bollard infringement.

Mercedes had passed up the opportunity to make a stop under the previous safety car because of the five-second penalty, which would have kept Hamilton in the pits longer and cost track position. But this proved to be a mis-step as, when the time came for the race to get going it wasn't long before everyone had to pit for slicks anyway so Hamilton's third place was shortlived.

The race restarted on lap 46, with Verstappen comfortably ahead of Bottas and Hamilton. Verstappen resolved to complete one more lap before stopping for slicks in drying conditions, but changed his mind when informed Bottas had been called in to cover him. This ensured things remained unchanged for the top two but Hamilton, who stopped for softs a lap later, had to serve his five-second penalty and rejoined down in 12th place.

Phase 6 - Advantage... Stroll!

There was a twist when a driver who by his own admission was often on the wrong tyre thanks to repeated gambles suddenly came into play.

Racing Point's Lance Stroll, who had previously run no higher than 11th, found himself in the lead. If that seemed unlikely, it could have been George Russell's Williams in that position had the team listened to his suggestion while running directly ahead of Stroll under the safety car to pit for slicks.

Stroll had been called in under the safety car from 15th place before the leaders pitted.

It was perfectly timed, and having been able to cruise up to the back of the safety-car queue on his out-lap he cycled through to the lead over the next two laps. For a few glorious moments on lap 48, the Racing Point man enjoyed his lead before Verstappen blasted past him on the run to the Turn 6 hairpin seconds after Stroll was informed of his remarkable position.

Phase 7 - Victory for Verstappen

With Verstappen back up front, all he had to do was reel off the remaining laps. But behind, there were still podium positions up for grabs. Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kvyat had matched Stroll's slick gamble and launched himself up to third ahead of Bottas and Sainz, but the real threat was Vettel.

He had taken the restart down in ninth but worked his way up to sixth lap by the end of lap 56, enjoying the dry conditions more after struggling in the wet earlier. This became fifth on the next lap when Bottas, who had been unable to get past Stroll, capped a disastrous weekend for Mercedes by spinning at Turn 1 and nosing into the barrier. Another safety car.

This set up a five lap sprint to the flag, with the main question mark hanging over which driver would take the final podium position thanks to the fact Hamilton remained outside the points following several late pitstops and a spin at Turn 1 of his own before Bottas's off.

Kvyat took the restart second having overtaken Stroll with the assistance of the DRS on lap 50 while Vettel slipped past Sainz for fourth at the Turn 6 hairpin after the restart. He then picked off Stroll and Kvyat in the same place to take second, although by this stage he was too far behind Verstappen to be a victory threat.

Kvyat held on to third ahead of Stroll and Sainz, with Albon capping a strong performance on his first experience of an F1 car in the wet with sixth having established himself in the top 10 early.

Albon did have to survive a late-race clash with Gasly to hold the position, drifting to the right on the run to Turn 7 as the Red Bull driver attempted to move up the inside. That gave Gasly a front-left puncture, putting him out of the race and seemingly promoting Alfa Romeo pairing Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi to seventh and eighth - only for them to be penalised 30s for infringing the anti-traction control regulations related to maximum allowable lag between torque request at the throttle pedal and that at the clutch at the start.

As for Hamilton, on Verstappen's day he finished 11th on the road but picked up two points for ninth following the exclusion. That perhaps summed up the whole race - it was the kind of day where Hamilton could crash, have a disastrous race and still emerge with his world championship lead extended.