Down-to-the-wire German GP gets positive rating

2013 German Grand Prix

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The German Grand Prix took place without the feared boycott by some of the drivers amid the tyre chaos from Silverstone, and produced a race voted at 7.643 making it third-best this season so far.

The race was expected to be action-packed after Nico Rosberg was knocked out in Q2, leaving him with a lot of work to do come Sunday.

The race itself was not short of incidents: Felipe Massa spun out in the early stages, Jules Bianchi’s Marussia burst into flames then rolled across the track bringing out the safety car and of course that shocking incident in the pits.

Sebastian Vettel rose above the chaos to win his home grand prix for the first time, repelling attacks from Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen at different stages of the race. Here’s what F1 Fanatic readers made of it all.

Great race – different strategies and a showdown ’til the last corner with tyres that allowed wheel-to-wheel racing. That’s how F1 should be.
@Tmf42

Great race, really good fights for position all over the field, everyone was pushing as far as I could see. Again, we had a close finish. One more lap and it would have been even closer.

And look at it, no punctures today!
@Joao-pedro-cq

But not everyone was drawn into the battle between Vettel and the Lotuses:

Pretty boring. The gap to the leader might as well have been 30 seconds for all the difference it made.

Highlight of the race was Bianchi’s car rolling slowly across the track under it’s own volition.
@F1bobby

Others felt F1 is still dominated to an unhealthy degree by a single subject:

Yet another event dominated by tyres, tyres and tyres. Wearing very thin this narrative. So they didn’t blow up, hallelujah! A tyre manufacturer has managed to make a tyre that doesn’t explode when used. Congratulations.

How about making a tyre that race drivers can use to race instead of this contrived artificial substitute for water sprinklers.
@Psynrg

Bianchi’s dramas brought out the Safety Car, which remained on track for seven laps lasting over a quarter of an hour in total. Some felt that was too much:

So we watch a NASCAR-style F1 race, with the Safety Car coming for no other reason than to reduce the distances between the cars. It cancelled all the correct strategies that some teams and drivers made.

Bianchi’s car was no longer on the track, so the Safety Car should have entered back immediately, instead it closed the field, severely altering the result of the race.

F1 needs to change the Safety Car rules, sometimes it comes out for no reason and always stays at least two laps too long.
@Cristian

It was a solid race but that Safety Car was out for too long.
@n0ir

Naturally the incident in the pits provoked a lot of debate:

My heart sunk when I saw Webber’s pit crew botch his stop as I was really looking forward to seeing whether he had done enough to sneak past Vettel for the lead.

I am glad that the cameraman that got hit by Webber’s wheel is okay.
@Melchior

A shiver down the spine when Webber’s wheel flew away, my mind went back to Imola ’94.
@japhew-ryder

I think the pit crews, particularly among certain teams (I won’t name names), are starting to seriously ignore safety in their pursuit of lower pit stop times.
@Giuseppe

Others were unhappy that Red Bull’s mistake didn’t have greater consequences for Webber’s race:

The thing that was unfair was Red Bull made a terrible and dangerous mistake in the pits and Webber dropped a lap but, purely because of the the weird rules, got a massive advantage by being allowed to unlap, (while behind the Safety Car) catch up from the back, warm up his tyres and steam past all the cars on colder tyres that were having to drive at the much slower pace car speed. Then he ended up in the points.

What happened in the pits should have been race-ending. The guy on the wheel clearly indicated there was something wrong but the lollipop guy let him go. What happened to waiting for the guys on the wheels to put their hands up to show they were done?
@theoddkiwi

Red Bull later confirmed the person operating the wheel gun had accidentally pressed a button on the gun which sent an indication that the car was ready to be released.

I think this one post though sums up the 2013 German Grand Prix

There was suspense but no real fight for the lead. once red bull got the lead they managed it perfectly, and in the end they managed to win in a front-limited circuit, something very important for their form.

The fact that Red Bull managed great pit-stops except one weighed in my score, it was a shame to miss Webber so early and more importantly it was a very dangerous incident.

I really get angered when a race fails to deliver in the end and when a team repeatedly botches their own chances of victory, so frustrating.

More importantly of course we saw a shocking incident that seriously hurt someone.
@Peartree

Previous rate the race results

Image © Red Bull/Getty

24 comments on “Down-to-the-wire German GP gets positive rating”

  1. I accept that the British GP would have been race of the season had the tyres not delaminated but still Bahrain the track everyone says is boring has the highest rating so far

    1. @bezza695 That’s just one race in one season though. If we look at the ratings for all the races since 2008 Bahrain ranks sixth from bottom:

      Has F1 “improved the show”? See what the data says

    2. Rating the GP in the heat of the moment does not make it justice. So far we had good races and racing in 2013.
      People who highlights Bianchi’s car rolling backwards are not F1 fan, they want crashes and drama, not what F1 is about.

      1. What F1 is about is, whether we like it or not, up to each and every person to decide for themselves. If crashes and drama wins the audience, in general, that becomes what F1 “is about”.

        1. @mike I beg to differ: if “the audience” want crashes, “the audience” should watch demolition derbies or monster truck rallies. If another person wants to watch dust getting kicked up and tail-out slides, then they can watch rallying. If another wishes to see the fastest cars in the world racing wheel-to-wheel, they can watch F1.

          This is why we have different categories of motorsports, to suit different tastes. The different categories shouldn’t compromise to cater for a different audience, they should focus on improving the sport for the audience that has interest in the fundamental core values of its formula.

          1. I’m sure that people will note the high standards in which F1 should be viewed once they see you comment @vettel1.

            However, like I said, if people react to races with lots of crashes and incidents and vote the races high, then you can only take it that in general, within the population that voted, the audience is at least ok with that. The “Audience” coincidentally includes us I should point out.

            … Also given F1’s financial state as of now, we really don’t want to be sending viewers off to watch other sports haha!

          2. @mike

            … Also given F1′s financial state as of now, we really don’t want to be sending viewers off to watch other sports haha!

            I think that summarises it perfectly actually!

          3. Well said @vettel1 . If only there is more wheel to wheel racing at high speeds , it would be more fun to watch .It calls for some cost reduction to close in the gap to midfield. Maybe we can get this across to Bernie . On second thought , no . He may charge something to speak with fans :P

      2. @jeff1s

        Rating the GP in the heat of the moment does not make it justice.

        I don’t see what waiting until later when people have begun to forget details of what happened in the race would achieve, besides ensuring fewer people participate in the poll.

        1. @keithcollantine, so it’s all about the number of people participating in the poll, making the numbers?

          I thought you were above that…

          1. @jeff1s That’s nothing like what I was saying.

            You put forward a view suggesting the Rate the Race articles should go up later. You did not point out why this should be done, I pointed out an obvious disadvantage.

            So, what would be the benefit of putting the articles up later? Why do you think people need to wait some unspecified length of time to work out whether they enjoyed a race or not?

          2. @keithcollantine

            The obvious counter argument there is, people can’t make as clear judgements in the heat of the moment.

            However, I think, generally speaking, the rate the race polls can be used to see how fans enjoyed each race, which I think means that, it should reflect the immediate feelings people have. Even if that may be, say, anger after the Alonso is faster than you incident for example. Or any other, singular race discussion dominating event.

    3. @bezza695 I feel that Sakhir is a great racing track but after the first 3 or 4 races there, events have changed because of politic turmoil and honestly some boring and above all disappointing starts of a season including the hideous decision to run the long track in 2010.

  2. What about opening “Rate the race” pool 1-2 hours after the race?

      1. @keithcollantine, Nothing to be gained, in the end we can’t change the minds of people rating the race 0/10 or on personnal liking.

        I never suggested a delayed poll, because we @keithcollantine, @michal2009b, @vettel1 rate the race with our mind not by our favorite driver’s or team’s position.

        In our world, poll has to be taken with subjectivity.

  3. Shocked that halfway the season any race has yet to score an 8.

    1. @kingshark I guess that is at least in part related to the fact that everyone is starting to acknowledge (me included) that having tyres which influence the race artificially to the extent they do now isn’t good for the sport. Again I shall repeat I don’t want to see strategy eliminated from the sport by a return to Bridgestone-esque tyres but now and then are two extremes: there’s plenty of middle ground.

      Another reason I shall propose though is that usually we’ve had one dominant driver on Sunday (with the exceptions being Malaysia and Silvestone). N.B. We had no “dominant” driver in Monaco or Germany either but the circumstances (particularly with the former) I believe played out such that Rosberg and Vettel respectively never looked like losing.

  4. The racing to the end comment was probably brought on by the safety car. No safety car would have had bigger gaps.

  5. Safety car ruined it

  6. What’s killing me is that hope that comes when gaps are near, but almost always nothing happens.

    1. @peartree

      Compared to say, 10 years ago, that is soooo much less of a problem now haha.

      1. @mike So true but 10 years ago Ferrari just cruised to victory they didn’t taunt their opponents by sticking to 1.5 secs for long periods of the race.

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