admingerman. — Lewis Hamilton fought his way up from 20th on the grid to finish third as his team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg won the German Grand Prix.
The Briton staged a superb recovery drive despite damaging his front wing in a collision at around half-distance when passing Jenson Button’s McLaren.
He caught Williams’ Valtteri Bottas in the final laps but could not pass.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel beat Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso for fourth with team-mate Daniel Ricciardo sixth.
“I put my foot on the pedal and something failed,” he wheezed, seemingly winded by the impact during qualifying for today’s German Grand Prix.
It was at Sachs Kurve, the 13th corner at Hockenheim, that a broken disc in his front right wheel sent his car careering across the gravel and sideways into the tyre wall.
He had completed just five laps, condemning him to 16th place, and possibly to starting in the pit lane once his car has been restored, when he should have contested pole.
His only true rival for the prime front-row position was Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, who ended up setting the fastest time of the day by sixth-tenths of a second. Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, both of Williams, start second and third.
Hamilton was taken to the medical centre for tests while his car was lifted by hoist onto a truck and covered in a black cloth, his hopes of narrowing the four-point deficit to Rosberg at the top of the drivers’ standings badly damaged.
At the paddock, Hamilton said: ‘Nico has basically got another gift, but we will see what we can do tomorrow.’ ‘Why always me?’ he might have added, a la Mario Balotelli.
The hard fact is that Rosberg has out-qualified Hamilton 6-4, an extraordinary statistic given the Briton’s reputation as a one-lap specialist.
However, there is no evidence to underpin the Twitter morons claiming within minutes of the accident that Hamilton is suffering at the hands of pro-German saboteurs in the team.
The conspiracy theorists might consider whether Niki Lauda, the Mercedes chairman, brought Hamilton in at great expense to help them win the title only to bring him down.
This was Hamilton’s second technical misfortune of the season. The other was an engine failure in Melbourne. Rosberg has suffered one, a gearbox problem at Silverstone a fortnight ago. (Although Hamilton retired from the Canadian Grand Prix, that was partly because he failed to manage overheating brakes as well as Rosberg, who, despite being plagued by the same affliction, nursed his car through to second place.)
Rosberg waved his black and turquoise glove at the thinly-populated stands as he turned into the pits on this scorching day in the Eichelgarten woods. He was happy to have taken pole in front of his home fans, but not as ecstatic as he has been on other such occasions.
“I would have preferred it if it was an open fight with Lewis,’ said the German. While sitting at his press conference, he watched Hamilton’s crash for the first time on the TV. ‘It looked pretty bad, but I believe he is just a little bit bruised,’ said Rosberg, who also explained that he uses different front brake discs from Hamilton (Brembo rather than Carbon Industrie, since you ask).
He was asked by a Finnish journalist whether he was half of the first all-Finnish front row. His father is Finland’s 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg, though he competes under the flag of his mother, Sina. “Yes, I agree,” he smiled. He later changed his mind, saying: “I am half Finnish so there are one-and-a-half Finns on the podium and that is a record, too.”
Hamilton was understandably less jovial, but no less determined. ‘It wasn’t a great feeling when that happened, you just have to take your hands off the wheel and brace for the impact. — Mailonline.
Online Reporter