F1 Fanatic

After a frustrating start to the weekend with several reliability problems Virgin showed some pace in the race:

Timo Glock

Started last after his gearbox change penalties. Using hard tyres, he ran a long first stint before switching to super-softs at the end.

Heikki Kovalainen’s retirement came as Glock was closing on him quickly, and left the German driver best of the new teams’ finishers at home.

Compare Timo Glock’s form against his team mate in 2010

Lucas di Grassi

An innocuous-looking spin at the first turn spelled the end of his race with broken left-rear suspension.

Despite the problems during the weekend Nick Wirth was encouraged:

A very encouraging day for the team. We chose a conservative strategy of starting both cars on prime tyres and at the beginning the extra performance of the Option tyres allowed Heikki to open up a small gap which became bigger when the blue-flag-hell started. At the same time, Timo got stuck behind Bruno for a long time before he was able to get Lucas back in his sights.

After Heikki finally pitted for his prime tyres, and came out behind us, it was encouraging to see us able to maintain or increase our gap despite his advantage of fresh tyres. Lucas was having another very strong race, when it looks like a very harsh exit kerb caused a rear suspension issue which sadly forced us to retire him. On the other hand, Timo’s race ended with a nice gap in the blue flags which allowed him to put in a sequence of quick laps and finish the best of the new teams. [...]

Timo’s race fastest lap was only 2.3 seconds down on the leader and 1.4 down on the fastest Williams, which is impressive in our first year.
Nick Wirth

Compare Lucas di Grassi’s form against his team mate in 2010

2010 German Grand Prix

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• Ferrari: “Lauda missed out on a fine opportunity to keep his mouth shut”
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• From the stands: Tommy B and Katy watch the German GP at Hockenheim
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• “I am much quicker than Felipe” – how Alonso urged Ferrari to use team orders
• F1 fans slam rigged German Grand Prix
• 2010 German Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic race weekend review
• Who was the best driver of the German Grand Prix weekend? (Poll)