german grand prix

Well, the german grand prix was actually pretty good.

From memory the nurburgring, where it is held every two years, hasn't really been that great for overtaking, but it produced a good race this time.  Unfortunately for the championship Vettel won, taking him to 30-odd points in the lead.

It's a shame the championship is not more interesting as the races themselves have tended to have a reasonable amount of action, it's just that Vettel seems to be just that bit more consistent than everybody else.

There were a few unfortunate incidents in the race, though.  One of Mark Webber's rear wheels wasn't attached in a pit stop and as he drove off it careened down the pit lane and unfortunately hit a cameraman - he obviously was focused on his job filming a pit stop at Mercedes so wasn't really paying attention for rogue wheels.  He was quite badly injured, with broken bones.

Also, one of the lower teams cars (I forget who) had a huge engine blow out that resulted in a bit of a fire.  It's quite rare to see that sort of thing these days, though it was quite common years ago.  Anyway, the driver therefore pulled off the track and leapt out pretty sharpish, which was fine and the on-board extinguisher killed the fire, but unfortunately the car started to roll back down the hill and crossed the circuit.

It ended up lodged against an advertising hoarding and didn't cause an accident, but it was a bit unfortunate and could have been disastrous.  I think it was a combination of things - the driver obviously pulled off and jumped out without really parking his car in any sense.  They're also required to leave the car in neutral, and it was on a hill, and I guess the marshals either didn't get to it quick enough or didn't get proper control of it and it set off rolling backwards.

On the good side there were no tyre problems at all.  Pirelli changed the rear tyre for this race, with the changes making it more durable, but also the type of circuit is quite different to Silverstone and from what they were saying on commentary, the design of the curbs was different, without the sharp corners.

The real proof of the pudding will come at Spa, which has similar high-speed elements to Silverstone, and the properly different tyres Pirelli are going to introduce.