Vettel holding all the cards in Hockenheim

Sebastian Vettel is on pole position for his home race for the first time in eight years. A first-ever F1 victory at the Hockenheimring beckons if all goes to plan on Sunday.

He has plenty of reasons to be confident: His Ferrari makes the best starts, has great straight-line speed and his closest championship rival is starting outside the top 10. Vettel is holding all the cards, but Hockenheim hasn’t always been kind to him.

“I have a bit of a mixed relationship with this track,” Vettel admitted after qualifying. “It seems sometimes we were really close in the past then for some reason it didn’t come together.

“So far this weekend it’s been great. The car is behaving well. I think we improved it for today.”

He looked at the top of his game in qualifying. Vettel seemed to keep more in hand for Q3 than his rivals, finding half a second more than anyone else as he swept to his fifth pole position of the year. Though the question remains what kind of contest we might have seen had Lewis Hamilton made it to Q3.

[f1vision]

Regardless, Vettel has the chance to inflict serious damage on Hamilton in the championship. His first job will be to beat Bottas to turn one. This has been a Ferrari strength of late, as Hamilton pointed out on Thursday. “Ferrari have pretty good starts for the last three or four races,” he said. “They’ve been doing something different.”

“There’s a list that we have knowing where we are in terms of starts through the year,” he explained. “Ferrari have always been very strong. I think I had the best starts last year. We are now behind and that’s an area we can improve. We will.”

Hamilton did a series of practice starts during practice on Friday. Whatever Mercedes may have found won’t be as much help for him from 14th on the grid, but Valtteri Bottas in the other Mercedes will start alongside the Ferrari. The run to turn one at Hockenheim is short, however, and as Vettel showed in 2010 he knows exactly how to keep a fast-starting rival behind from pole position here.

Given that, Bottas may be more concerned about keeping Kimi Raikkonen’s third-placed Ferrari behind than worrying about taking the fight to Vettel. The long runs to turns two, six (the Spitzkehre) and six will give Ferrari plenty of opportunities to deploy their prodigious grunt.

Race day looks increasingly likely to stay dry but temperatures are expected to be cooler than on Friday, when several drivers experienced blistering. Even if it does get as hot as it did on Friday, that is unlikely to tip drivers into considering two-stop strategies. With all of the top 10 drivers starting on the same tyre, there will be little room for manoeuvre as far as tactics are concerned.

The only likely question is going to be whether those starting on the ultra-softs find it quicker to run on softs or mediums for their final stint. Those who start outside the top 10 – notably including Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo – will have fresh rubber and therefore the opportunity to run a longer first stint.

Mercedes say they aren’t concerned about Hamilton’s engine or gearbox after his loss of hydraulic pressure, so a penalty looks unlikely. Therefore he is expected to start 14th and should make his way up to fifth very quickly – after his first-lap clash at Silverstone he was back among the ‘big three’ teams within 10 laps. How successful his day is will hinge on how quickly he makes it through those cars at the start – and, of course, if there is a Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car.

For Ricciardo the climb through the field could be harder. However the Red Bull is very strong through the fast turn one, which should set them up nicely for the long straights, DRS zones and overtaking opportunities which follow it.

From fifth and sixth on the grid the Haas pair have a shot at a good result if they can keep out of each other’s way at the start. Fernando Alonso, on ‘new-tyre pole’ in 11th, should be a candidate for points in a McLaren which, for reasons which continue to puzzle the team, is more competitive over a race distance than a single lap.

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Qualifying times in full

	Driver	Car	Q1	Q2 (vs Q1)	Q3 (vs Q2)
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’12.538	1’12.505 (-0.033)	1’11.212 (-1.293)
2	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’12.962	1’12.152 (-0.810)	1’11.416 (-0.736)
3	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1’12.505	1’12.336 (-0.169)	1’11.547 (-0.789)
4	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	1’13.127	1’12.188 (-0.939)	1’11.822 (-0.366)
5	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	1’13.105	1’12.523 (-0.582)	1’12.200 (-0.323)
6	Romain Grosjean	Haas	1’12.986	1’12.722 (-0.264)	1’12.544 (-0.178)
7	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’13.479	1’12.946 (-0.533)	1’12.560 (-0.386)
8	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Renault	1’13.324	1’13.032 (-0.292)	1’12.692 (-0.340)
9	Charles Leclerc	Sauber	1’13.077	1’12.995 (-0.082)	1’12.717 (-0.278)
10	Sergio Perez	Force India	1’13.427	1’13.072 (-0.355)	1’12.774 (-0.298)
11	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1’13.614	1’13.657 (+0.043)
12	Sergey Sirotkin	Williams	1’13.708	1’13.702 (-0.006)
13	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1’13.562	1’13.736 (+0.174)
14	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’13.012
15	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1’13.318
16	Esteban Ocon	Force India	1’13.720
17	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso	1’13.749
18	Brendon Hartley	Toro Rosso	1’14.045
19	Lance Stroll	Williams	1’14.206
20	Stoffel Vandoorne	McLaren	1’14.401

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Over to you

Can anyone stop Vettel from taking his first F1 victory in Hockenheim? And where will Hamilton and Ricciardo finish from their compromised starting positions?

Share your views on the German Grand Prix in the comments.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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