Patronise F1

If further evidence was needed that the top two teams have swapped roles of late, and that it is now the red Ferraris playing catchup to the silver McLarens, the German weekend has proved that the pecking order has decisively changed. Hamilton dominated most of the weekend, extending a lead over Felipe Massa over the first half of the race here, and then when his strategy was knocked off-kilter by a lengthy safety car caused by a nasty crash for Toyota's Timo Glock, he breezed back past Massa and the surprising form of Nelson Piquet Jr to take the checkered flag with style, wrapping up the first home win for engine maker Mercedes since Mika Hakkinen's win in 1998 to boot.

The target for the team now is to end their own title-less streak which extends back to the same year, and right now, they have edged into the role as favourites, as Ferrari start to flounder. The hope for the Italians lies with the fact that, thanks to a combination of reliability and the current points system, Massa and Raikkonen remain very much within touching distance of the top spot. As and when Ferrari get back on track, Hamilton is unlikely to be over the hill and far away.

The race itself was a proverbial "game of two halves", in cliched football platitude terms. The start, despite worries and moans of the potential for a first corner pile-up, was relatively quiet. Hamilton gave Massa a "Hammy chop" off the line to cement his lead, while the Brazilian held off Heikki Kovalainen for second place. The main mover was Robert Kubica, who had another slow race for BMW Sauber, as he leapt up from 7th place to take 4th by the end of the opening lap, powering past Raikkonen off the line and then scything past Fernando Alonso and Jarno Trulli over then next few corners.

As the race settled into a groove, and Hamilton serenely extended a lead in front, with Massa keeping clear of Kovalainen, Kubica, Trulli, Raikkonen, Alonso and Vettel. Trulli resumed his role from a couple of years ago, holding up plenty of seemingly faster cars behind him, and it seemed as if overtaking was all-but impossible around the Hockenheim track, aside from a neat move from David Coulthard on fellow Brit Jenson Button, busy having another dreary outing for Honda. No rain this time for the Japanese team to take advantage of, and Button and Rubens Barrichelo were embarrassingly nowhere.

Through the first stops, Kimi Raikkonen was the main beneficiary, his car heavier than others around him, which went some way to explaining his awful qualifying pace, and he moved up to 5th. Timo Glock also benefitted from running a very log first stint, and came from nowhere to exit the pits in 7th place, just behind his team mate Trulli.

That was as good as it got for the home boy though, as Glock became the first, and a spectacular, retirement on lap 36, after his cars suspension failed exiting the final corner, pitching him at high speed into the pit wall before rebounding back across the track. He was ok, but the track wasn't, and the safety car emerged.

This precipitated a dive for the pits by just about everyone, save race leader Hamilton, who was running a longer middle stint (largely because of the lack of confidence the team have with Hamilton on the softer Bridgestones), along with Nick Heidfeld, who moved up to second, and Nelson Piquet Jr, who lucked in to third having made his pit on a one stop strategy just before the accident. From the restart, Hamilton sped away from the BMW in second, while Massa remained toiling behind Piquet Jr in a heavy Ferrari.

It was never likely that the McLaren had enough fuel left for Hamilton to extend a big enough lead to pit and retain the lead, but he did manage a 15 second lead by the time he pitted on lap 49, meaning he emerged clear of the squabbling midfield, and just behind his team mate Kovalalinen, who had earlier executed the pass of the race to squeeze around the outside of Robert Kubica's BMW to grab 4th place after the restart. The pass by Hamilton on his team mate was a pass of the race in a different sense, being as it was an uncontested piece of team trickery down at the hairpin. Technically the silly "no team orders" rule was fairly well violated, but complaining about McLaren's tactics there is a) to ignore all the other times it has been flaunted by other teams (most recently BMW in Montreal), and b) just plain boring.

If Hamilton was helped up to 4th, he did the rest on his own. Once Heidfeld pitted and dropped to 4th, Hamilton quickly caught and passed 2nd placed Massa on the drag to the hairpin. Massa could have defended more aggressively (i.e. at all), and he may have wished he did after Hamilton pushed him wide on the hairpin exit, and then hung him out to dry again when Massa made a half-hearted effort to re-pass a corner later.

The recovery drive was complete three laps later, as the McLaren breezed past the leading Renault of Piquet to take a lead he held to the flag. Though losing the lead may have disappointed the rookie Brazilian, he'll be heartened by his debut second place, which owed everything to the timing of the safety car than anything else, seeing as he had been nowhere up to that point. A result that won't have been great reading for Fernando Alonso either, who had a disappointing race which eventually saw him spin down to 11th place.

Massa held off Heidfeld for third, while Ickle's 4th place was another fortuitous hatful of points for a driver all at sea for most of the weekend again. Whether his luck will run out remains to be seen, but it saw him beat team mate Kubica, who finished 7th, and has seen his title hopes vanish recently. In between the BMW twins, Kovalainen took 5th and Raikkonen 6th, both probably feeling that they could and should have done a bit better. Sebastian Vettel finished a strong weekend by grabbing the final point place a few laps from the end, after Jarno Trulli ran off the track and allowed the Toro Rosso past.

Elsewhere, Red Bull had a rubbish weekend. Coulthard got a terrible start, then ended up crashing into Barrichello, sending the Brazilian into retirement and leaving DC in 13th. Meanwhile Webber ran strongly before the safety car, but got a dose of his pre-2008 luc after his final pit stop, as smoke began to billow from the formerly bulletproof RBR car. He became only the third retirement from the race, along with Boobens and Glock, in what was his first mechanical retirement of the year, which given his history, is pretty astonishing.

Williams were dire, while Force Indias dour race was compounded by Giancarlo Fisichella's post-race 25 second penalty for getting his safety car rules wrong and unlapping himself when he shouldn't, showing again that something has gone wrong when even the drivers and teams don't understand what to do behind the safety car. It really does need sorting out. Either way, a 14th place became 17th for Fisichella.

* After 25 second penalty for safety car messups.

Drivers Championship Standings -
1 Hamilton 58pts, 2 Massa 54pts, 3 Raikkonen 51pts, 4 Kubica 48pts, 5 Heidfeld 41pts, 6 Kovalainen 28pts, 7 Trulli 20pts, 8 Webber 18pts, 9 Alonso 13pts, 10 Barrichello 11pts, 11 Piquet Jr 10pts, 12 Rosberg, Nakajima 8pts, 14 Coulthard, Vettel 6pts, 16 Glock 5pts, 17 Button 3pts, 18 Bourdais 2pts.

Constructors Championship Standings -
1 Ferrari 105pts, 2 BMW Sauber 89pts, 3 McLaren 86pts, 4 Toyota 25pts, 5 Red Bull 24pts, 6 Renault 23pts, 7 Williams 16pts, 8 Honda 14pts, 9 Toro Rosso 8pts.