A Fortunate Mistake: How Lewis Hamilton won the German GP

There were smiles all around the McLaren camp as their man crossed the line to score a sensational victory, and any question marks about the strategy could be quickly forgotten.

It hadn't seemed quite so clear cut a little earlier, when the race leader stayed out under the Safety Car as his rivals piled into the pitlane. And yet the leader proved to be quick enough to be able to pit under green and still take the chequered flag in front.

"You've got to believe in the data, and this is one of those times when that belief was well founded," said Ron Dennis. "In fact, the call was perfect and the outcome of the race demonstrated how well our strategists reacted."

"There were some doubts at the time," admitted McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh. "But we believed in the approach we took."

It was all smiles as Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen came back to the paddock from the press conference, and the celebrations could begin. Kimi? Yes, Kimi. You see, we're talking here not about Germany 2008, but Monaco 2005, when a very similar set of circumstances unfolded to those we saw last weekend at Hockenheim.

Then, as now, a McLaren driver comfortably in the lead of a race stayed out when a Safety Car was dispatched, and then had to open up enough of an advantage over the heavier cars behind to be able to make his stop and retain the lead. In 2005, Raikkonen did precisely that, and then some - he needed to open up 20 seconds in 13 laps, but in fact he pulled out an astonishing 34-second lead on the Renault of the tyre-troubled Fernando Alonso.

Last week, Lewis Hamilton was given a similar task. He needed to pull around 23 seconds in just nine laps. He didn't do it, but fortunately passing at Hockenheim is much easier than in Monaco, and he was able to reclaim his lead.

It looked for all the world as if it was planned that way, but it wasn't. Hamilton wasn't supposed to drop back into the chasing pack and have to do some passing, but arguably he spared the blushes of the guys on the pit wall, as well as those back in Woking.

After the race, Dennis made it clear that the decision to leave Lewis out had been generated back in the UK. In fact, it was at that Monaco race three years ago that the world at large learned just how much McLaren rely on their team of guys who spend their Sundays in the factory. After that race the then McLaren technical director Adrian Newey gave me an interesting insight into how it worked, and presumably the system still operates that way.

"We have a couple of guys in Woking who come in over the weekend," he explained. "They make strategic recommendations to help us on the pit wall. It's not their full-time job, they basically work in the simulation department on other areas during the week, but that's their weekend job.

"They watch ITV, and we have noticed at times that things are spotted on television, by someone like Martin Brundle, that we haven't spotted for ourselves.

"It's very useful because one of the dangers of the pitlane is that it's such a noisy, crowded environment, and sometimes it's difficult to think straight. Being in a quiet room is so much easier, and communications are easier. We still make decisions at the track, but they make recommendations, which we may or may not choose to take note of.

"You don't want to have too much of a committee that's slow to react, and equally if you're putting people in charge of things, and they became the specialist, it can be a little bit arrogant to then say 'we're going to do that job ourselves'.

"The fact of the matter is that Ron and myself, when it comes to strategy during a race, are really Sunday afternoon heroes. The other guys do their job. I think it helps just to have people who are not distracted by the noise and everything else that's going on."

Clearly there are a lot of sound reasons for having this extra support, but there are times when those guys simply don't have all the information to be able to make the right call, and perhaps, this was one of those occasions.

To re-cap, Hamilton had been flying in the first stint, opening up a lead of over 11 seconds on Ferrari's Felipe Massa before his first stop. We now know that he stopped a little early, presumably to avoid the risk of a Safety Car catching him out.

The Brazilian ran a couple of laps longer and that, along with the fact that Lewis took on a relatively large load, helped him to close the gap to 8 seconds. Lewis then edged it back out to 11 seconds, where it stabilised for a few laps. Then on lap 35 came Timo Glock's shunt.

The big difference between now and 2005 is that the Safety Car rules have changed. Back then, when it was called for, you might only have seconds to make a decision and tell your guy to come in. If he missed the first opportunity, he was pretty much screwed.

The situation at Monaco was complicated by slight confusion over whether the Safety Car was coming out or not and by the vagaries of radio communications in the principality. After that race some McLaren folk pretty much admitted that Raikkonen was supposed to have been called in, but the message was too late and he didn't get it in time. That led to the switch to Plan B, leaving the Finn out to rebuild his lead, although others in the camp subsequently insisted that everything went exactly as intended.

These days there is no excuse for that sort of problem because of the closure of the pitlane for refuelling. Typically, there are a couple of laps while the field is bunched up, during which time there is ample opportunity for number crunching and considering all the options. Too much, you might argue, because it gives teams the chance to talk themselves out of the obvious, instinctual decision, which in last weekend's case was to pit. Instead, Lewis was told to stay out as everyone else - bar Nick Heidfeld - came in.

Obviously the guys at the factory and on the pit wall had a lot more information to work with than you or I, but the basic consideration was how much fuel Hamilton still had in the car, and therefore how far he could go if he didn't stop, and at what pace. You might think that some consideration was given to whether or not it was wise to put him on the softer tyre for such a big stint to the flag, but apparently that was not an issue and, as we saw, it worked out fine on Nelson Piquet's Renault.

One thing the Woking guys didn't have a proper feel for was what everyone else was doing. Every pit was full of crews expecting drivers, and even from five pits away McLaren could see two sets of tyres being readied at Ferrari, so it was apparent that both were going to come in. It wasn't just a question of responding to the main opposition - the team said they were caught out because more cars pitted than expected and there was less traffic between Hamilton and Massa than they anticipated.

As is usually the case, Lewis was given information on a 'need to know' basis. The remaining laps under safety car gave him plenty of time to think things through. What was going on here?

"There was no worry about the tyres, but they strongly felt it was easy enough for us to pull the gap," he said later. "They clearly had so much confidence in me, but this sort of thing happens.

"I saw on the TV screens that everyone else was watching that Felipe and Heikki had pitted. To my recollection, they were second and third. Then they let all the [lapped] people past the Safety Car, so they'd be right on my tail. I was thinking how the hell am I going to get this gap? But the team were confident that I was going to be able to do it. Then I noticed there were a couple of people in between us, Jenson Button and a Renault. So what I did was put the pedal to the metal and try to get a gap, but there wasn't enough time for it."

Clearly, the team factored in that everyone else would be heavier, and while they were all on newer tyres, chances were they would be the less favourable ones of that particular team or driver. The one thing nobody knew, and which the guys in Woking had less chance of ascertaining than those on the pit wall, was how long the Safety Car period would last.

Ron Dennis admitted that the team underestimated this, but given the extent of the debris field, the stranded wreck, and the fact that the FIA had to consider the lapped cars and get them waved around, this was not going to be a quick turnaround. It never is these days, especially if lapped cars are involved. It's a good excuse, but given the aforementioned number crunching, surely it was a bit sloppy not to take an extended period into account when doing the sums?

It stretched out to six laps, the first of which was completed at near racing speed as Lewis came round to be met by the safety car at Turn 1.

When the guys did the sums they probably thought Lewis would have more laps in which to rebuild his lead. Every lap of safety car running reduced that window (but in effect only by around half a lap, thanks to fuel saving while running slowly, allowing him to stop later than scheduled). When it finally went green at the start of lap 42, Hamilton had just nine laps to play with.

Even allowing for everyone else bar Heidfeld carrying the extra payload of 17 laps' worth of fuel relative to Lewis (to get to the flag), opening up 23 seconds - on whoever was the next driver without a stop to make - was an impossible ask. It certainly didn't help that his tyres had been on the car since the start of lap 19, and had gone through that cycle of cooling off behind the Safety Car.

One of the slight complications was that Lewis was racing several different cars. Right behind him was Heidfeld, who had also stayed out and had another stop to make. But he could not be discounted - if he stayed close enough to Lewis and then ran extra laps, he might still be a threat. Piquet was first on the road of those who didn't need to stop, but surely the man who really mattered was Massa, right behind him?

"As I started to pull my gap, I could see the people behind. It was hard the first couple of laps because the tyres were cold because the Safety Car was so slow. I was pulling a good gap, but it was 13 seconds, 13 and a bit, and that wasn't enough. I needed 23.

"They did a normal call-in when they check the balance of the car [before a pit stop], and I knew at that stage it's impossible, now I've really got my work cut out. So I made sure I got my pit entry and pit exit right, the pitstop was great, and I was on it. This is business time."

When the time to stop came on lap 50, Hamilton had managed to pull only 4.8 seconds on Heidfeld, and 13.8 seconds on Piquet who, to most people's surprise, had stayed in front of Massa.

Hamilton came out of the pits in fifth, right on the tail of his own teammate, Heikki Kovalainen. Had it been someone else, he might have had a little more trouble, but after a lap the Finn prudently ran wide and invited the Briton through.

"Fair play to Heikki, what a great guy," praised Hamilton. "He knew that I was a lot quicker than him at the time, and he knows where we stand if I'm much quicker than him.

"Yes, we want to race each other, we want to beat each other, but if it's clear that I'm much, much quicker than him, and we're going to have troubles - he was just so sensible, he didn't fight with me and do stupid things. He's such a smart and decent guy. I'm going to go and say 'thank you' to him now, because without him I wouldn't have finished where I did."

Heidfeld ran three more laps before stopping and wasn't too far off getting out in front. But he was out of the picture now, and with 13 laps to go Hamilton was 2.5 seconds off Massa. He soon closed him down and barged past.

"I was able to follow, which was great, and I clearly had much better pace than him. I managed to get a good exit from the last corner, following him through Turn 1 and Turn 2, got a good exit and slipstreamed behind him. But I couldn't pull alongside him, they were very quick at the end of the straight.

"So I just pulled out to the inside and had to out-brake him. In doing so he braked very late as well, we both locked up and went a bit straight. I just had to cover my ground and got a good exit. He came back at the next exit, which was good of him, he did a great job, he was very fair."

It took another three laps to catch and pass Piquet, who to his great credit was driving superbly. On lap 60, Hamilton dived inside the Renault and that was it, job done with seven laps to spare.

"Usually Felipe is very hard to overtake, and especially Nelsinho is very hard to overtake, but it was pretty straight forward. It didn't have to be do or die, I had easily got the pace. I positioned my car perfectly and it was 'I'm coming past, full stop'. It was a really good battle, they were very fair and I enjoy that. But I thought the job was done once I'd got past Felipe, I was like are you kidding me?"

He made it look easy and given that of the three cars he had to pass, one was his teammate, one was struggling with brake problems, and the other had qualified 17th, perhaps it was. But it could have all gone horribly wrong somewhere. Far more risks were introduced by not stopping, and contact with Massa could have ended it all. Still it worked, he won, and the 10 points were in the bank.

"I thought that maybe we wouldn't win the race, maybe we would just have to pick up some points, which was a bit of a shame because we'd done such a good job up until then. But I remained confident, and so did the team, that we'd still pull it off. I think if I wasn't able to pass, and I proved I can pass, it wouldn't have been possible."

But even Dennis sheepishly admitted that perhaps stopping Hamilton along with everyone else would have been a more prudent option. There was one possible extra gain for McLaren. By not bringing in both cars together, Kovalainen may have ended up better off by a position or two. Stacked behind Massa, Raikkonen lost five places after the safety car, to Jarno Trulli, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg.

Webber retired before the restart and Kimi did manage to get past all of those guys - plus Robert Kubica - to claim sixth. Had he been forced to wait behind Lewis, Kovalainen would have been in a similar situation, and there was certainly no guarantee that he would have made it back to the fifth place he eventually earned.

Helping Heikki was a fortunate side effect, and definitely not the aim of the strategy. It's not easy out there, and twice this year we've seen Ferrari get it very wrong in wet races when they put a little too much faith in weather forecasts and rather less into sheer common sense.

This week, Whitmarsh insisted there was nothing too wrong with what the team did: "Hindsight is always 20:20, and we feel we made the right decisions based on the tough choices available to us. Don't forget, too, that it was less clear-cut for Lewis because we had fuelled him longer than the other cars at his first pitstop.

"We had a bigger fuel window than the other teams, who were much closer to their second pitstop when the safety car was deployed. Therefore, it was a much easier call for them than it was for us. I'm sure the decision for Ferrari was far more straightforward because they probably weren't going to beat us."

Nevertheless, the bottom line is, there was perhaps a little good fortune involved last weekend, as there was when Lewis's Monaco crash did not put him out of the race and switched him to a perfect strategy, and as there was at Silverstone, when the first corner touch with his teammate did not lead to catastrophe.

To win this title he's going to need to enjoy some days when it all just falls into place and he's not teetering on the brink of disaster.

"I was left to do an almost impossible job but I managed to pull it off," said Lewis. "We will go back, we will have a chat, but at the end of the day we won, and without the superb job they did preparing the car, we wouldn't have been able to win. There's no blaming anyone, we all did a solid job."

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