Timo Glock: The homecoming rookie

This weekend will see the first German Grand Prix without Michael Schumacher since 1991, not counting 1999, when he was out with injury. Of course, the seven-time world champion was absent from last year's European GP at the Nurburgring, but Hockenheim is the one that really counts, as most German drivers will tell you.

Schumacher (and indeed his brother Ralf) may be gone, but there will be five home drivers in this weekend's race, and it will be interesting to see how the crowd greets each of them. Nick Heidfeld is no stranger to the partisan crowd, and has the best chance of getting on the podium. But Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil, Sebastian Vettel and Timo Glock are all part of a new generation. For the last three this will be the first experience of a German GP at Hockenheim.

Glock admits that it's going to be a special weekend for him: "I would say so, because it's just 45 minutes away from my home town. But until I was in GP2, I never watched an F1 race there. The only time I watched a Grand Prix was when we drove together with Formula BMW at the Nurburgring, and when F3 was together with F1 in Magny-Cours. Those were the only times I've been to F1 races!

"But every time I've been, there had good results in Hockenheim, especially in 2006, when I had one of my best races, winning the Sunday GP2 race on the last lap. That was quite a good one! So Hockenheim has good memories."

Like Nelson Piquet at Renault and Kazuki Nakajima at Williams, Glock has had a tough debut season, and has had to contend with an extremely quick teammate. Canada was the first time he outqualified Jarno Trulli, although to be fair the Italian had a 'mare of a weekend. On the Sunday, Glock scored his first Toyota points, finishing fourth, a couple of places ahead of Trulli.

That highlight aside, he's had a lot of bad luck, often getting involved in early tangles that were not necessarily his fault.

Timo Glock is hit by Nico Rosberg during the British Grand Prix © XPB

"We had quite a lot of ups and downs, and weekends where at the end the result didn't show the potential, I would say.

"Australia was a bit disappointing because we could have scored points already there. In Malaysia I was quicker, but I was out after half a lap. In Bahrain we were unlucky with a clutch problem in the race. In Turkey I had a really good qualifying but the front suspension broke. Stuff like this was really unlucky, and didn't show the potential.

"In the end I think Canada was positive for us, and Magny-Cours with Jarno (on the podium) was a big boost for the team as well. For me it was a bit too much up and down, this is why I'm not really happy with it, but we have to turn it around and just do our best in the second half of the season."

As Glock says, the first points could have come as early as Australia, but his race ended when he ran wide and the car fell to bits as it jumped over the kerbs. A score on that day of high attrition would have created a welcome honeymoon period, but to his credit, he has no regrets.

"It would maybe have made it just a bit easier for the following races. But everything has its positive side. I had to work quite hard through that period, and that gave me maybe more experience. If I had scored points in Australia I would maybe have taken things a bit easier. Instead I was every time under pressure."

It wasn't until the seventh race in Canada that he broke his duck. Again it was a race of high attrition, but Toyota made a good call on strategy with ultra-long opening stints, and both drivers were able to take advantage as they worked their way up the field.

"The car was not perfect, it was quite tricky to drive. But we went to a one-stop strategy, and in the end everything came together. We were a bit lucky. I was quite happy with the car in the race, but Jarno struggled a bit. We had everything together in the right moment in the right position.

"When my engineer came on the radio and said there was quite a big accident in the pitlane, and it was good for our strategy, I believed that we could be up there. Especially when I saw I could go quicker than Jarno, that was quite positive and gave me another boost. In the end I think it pushed me more and more when I saw the positions on the pit board."

He even briefly made it into the lead, although he didn't know it at the time: "Actually I didn't realise that, because I was so focused to keep the car on the track, and I knew these laps were important for the strategy. So I didn't realise I was leading the race. But in the end when I watched it on TV it was quite nice!"

Clearly a glass-half-full kind of guy, Glock has an interesting answer when asked which other race has given him the most satisfaction.

Timo Glock laps Monaco minus his front wing © LAT

"Maybe Monaco, to spin three times and still finish the race! It was perhaps not a positive weekend, because that was another possibility to be in the points, but it was good experience. The car was still in one piece..."

Glock has had an unusual career, flirting with F1 as long ago as 2004 and then benefiting from a year in Champcar and two more in GP2 before finding his way back into a race seat. It's a full CV by modern standards - compare it with those of Vettel and Sutil - but even the testing he did for BMW didn't really prepare him for the stresses of driving for a high-profile works team.

"It's quite busy, this is I think the main point where I have to improve myself, time management in F1 over a race weekend. There's just quite a lot of stuff to do, and then every time when you jump in the car you have to be focussed on driving. Sometimes in the beginning it was quite difficult, but now I just get more and more used to it.

"But it's a tough job, and with all the testing between the races, it just keeps you really busy. And the hardest thing for me is to every time bring the car in that window where it works perfectly for me. Jarno just shows every weekend that he can just put everything together, and for me it's a little bit up and down because of lack of experience. The grooved tyre is not my favourite, I would say!"

Glock's struggle to get the car to his liking is an interesting observation, because the fastidious Trulli has generally been very happy this year, suggesting that the pair have different ideas on what suits their respective styles.

"This is the point that I've been analysing with my engineers. When we get the car right, like we had it in Turkey, then we can show our potential and a strong performance. That was where I thought for the first time the car was 100% like I wanted to have it, and without a suspension problem in qualifying, we would have been in the top 10 then. But it didn't happen like this, and now we have to find a way to bring the car into this window every weekend, and then we can be strong."

So do the two drivers generally pursue different set-ups?

"Slightly different, yeah. Sometimes we are closer, sometimes we are more far away. It depends on the track, because the problem that I have with mid-corner understeer, on some tracks it's smaller, and on some tracks it's bigger, so the influence on the set-up is bigger. This is the main problem."

Getting it right in qualifying is especially difficult for drivers with less experience: "It is really tricky. When you have unstable conditions it makes it quite difficult to get everything up on temperature for your qualifying lap.

"If you overshoot the tyre a little bit, if you grain the tyre a little bit like I did in Magny-Cours. So it is quite tricky to get everything spot on every time. But this is just a lack of experience."

Timo Glock flies through the final chicane in Magny-Cours © LAT

Of course, it doesn't help when your teammate is known to be a one-lap specialist who invariably extracts everything out of the car. Silverstone was only the second time (after Canada) that Timo managed to sneak ahead of Trulli in qualifying, again on a day when the Italian had little luck. He's not an easy guy to outpace.

"I think so. I had to laugh in Bahrain when Fernando Alonso came to me as we went back from the drivers' meeting and he said, 'And what do you think about your teammate? He's quick, isn't he?' They worked quite a long time together! He is quick, he's just really good in qualifying, and in the races he's strong too.

"But this is good for me, because this is a point where I can improve myself. In the end it's positive, sure. But sometimes you get negative comments, when will you beat your teammate, and he's quicker than you. But I can't come in F1 and beat my teammate who has 150 Grands Prix more experience."

The difference in their start tallies is actually 177, but you get the point! Nevertheless, Timo needs to beat Jarno a few more times this year in order to guarantee himself a long-term future with the team.

On the surface he appears to be in a less pressured situation than Piquet, who has to deal with the very obvious ire of Renault boss Flavio Briatore after a bad weekend. But over the years Toyota have not been afraid to dump drivers who were deemed to be underperforming.

It was around a year ago that Glock was first talking seriously to Toyota, and before he was able to sign, there was a little contractual tug of love with BMW.

Presumably, had he remained as the latter's main test driver, he might now be in a position to slip into Nick Heidfeld's seat for 2009. BMW certainly rate him highly, and with the team having lost their claim on Sebastian Vettel, Glock could have been in the right place at the right time. But there were no guarantees that BMW would have worked out, and he can hardly regret taking the Toyota chance when it came.

"At that stage I didn't have the possibility to get a BMW race deal done, and for me it was the time to get everything done. I'm happy that Toyota came up to me and offered me the deal. That was quite a big moment for me.

"I'm really happy to work with Toyota, I get along really good with all the guys here. It's fun every time I'm back in Cologne with all the mechanics. It motivates me even more to get some good results for them."