German Grand Prix Review
By Chandni Hindocha
August 4 2004
Coming to the German Grand Prix we had seen a season of Ferrari dominance bar one blemish. We were expecting a strong Ferrari victory but people wanted a race and the race didn’t disappoint.
The story on Friday showed much the story of the rest of the season absolute Ferrari dominance. However there were definite signs of a resurgence from Mclaren with Kimi taking second place. Unfortunately Jenson Button had to make an engine change which meant he would be put back 10 places on the grid for the race. Saturday morning showed Schumacher to be a class apart leading the standings again. In the second Saturday session as everyone was fine tuning their cars for qualifying and the race Jenson Button was top of the class with the Ferrari’s down in 6th and 7th things were looking good for the rivals.
After the first Qualifying session it looked like Williams were going to be the main challengers but the early runs of Schumacher and Barichello compromised them and they ended up in 11th and 12th Jenson was looking good to minimize the damage by finishing third.
The important Qualifying session and Schumi really pulls one out of the bag a stunning lap of 1min13.31 Montoya managed to keep to the promise shown in qualy 1 but Pizzonia had a disaster of a lap and ended up down in 10th just ahead of the 2 Jaguars. Barichello was down in 7th almost a second off his teammate’s scintillating pace. A definite Mclaren resurgence by setting the 4th and 5th fastest times. Jenson Button managed the 3rd best time but because of his engine penalty he ended up in 13th thereby promoting the Mclarens into 3rd and 4th.
Race-day and it was expected for Juan Montoya to challenge Michael at the start but this did not materialise due to a change in the clutch biting point on his car. However Raikkonen who inherited the second place was able to stay with Schumacher until the first round of pitstops but on lap 14 he had a rear wing failure which caused him to crash out of the race. On the first lap Rubens Barichello had an accident with David Coulthard causing him to have to pit for a new front wing which put him to the back of the field. After this he wasn’t able to make ay impact on the race. Through the race Button made steady progress and had an excellent battle with Fernando Alonso for second place towards the end of the race. Both Renaults were damaged by Mclaren bodywork with Trulli ending up with a bit on the wing stuck under his car and Alonso losing the balance of his car which brought an end to his battle with Button.
Overall, it was a great race with the field. This was another example of the Ferrari-Schumacher partnership being streets ahead of anybody else. This race I was severely disappointed with Rubens Barichello. In the best car on the grid he managed to finish behind a Sauber which is about as good as last years F-2003GA. A definite star of the race was Jenson Button coming from 13th to 2nd. He has definitely given Ferrari something to think about and leaves the fans wondering what would have happened if he had started in 3rd without the engine penalty. The German Grand Prix has to be a contender for race of the season.