Maldonado on top as Schumacher crashes in the rain

2012 German Grand Prix second practice

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The rain remained at the Hockenheimring in the second hour-and-a-half of practice and this time it was even heavier.

Only Bruno Senna ventured out in the first quarter of an hour to check over his repaired car following Valtteri Bottas’s crash at the end of first practice.

As the rain eased and began to stop the cars filtered out onto the track, led by Jean-Eric Vergne who ran wide at turn eight on the soaked track as he set his first lap.

The track quickly filled up with the Ferrari and McLaren drivers among the last to join in. As the surface water began to lift the lap times fell quickly. The Ferrari pair were consistently among the quickest with Romain Grosjean regularly taking over at the top of the times as well.

The track passed the crossover point to intermediate tyres and drivers were beginning to consider slicks when the rain returned. At the same time race control were advising drivers they could use DRS again, fresh rain sent the cars back to the pits and DRS was swiftly deactivated again.

Pastor Maldonado had just set the fastest time before the conditions worsened, ahead of home drivers Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel.

A few drivers returns to the track for the final minutes of practice but two of them hit trouble. Daniel Ricciardo understeered off at the turn 13 hairpin in the Motodrom and came to a stop in the gravel trap without hitting anything.

But Michael Schumacher was not so fortunate when he lost control of his Mercedes one corner earlier. The W03 sustained front and rear damage as he bounced off the barriers. The session was red-flagged with four minutes remaining and not restarted.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
118Pastor MaldonadoWilliams-Renault1’27.47614
28Nico RosbergMercedes1’27.5640.08824
31Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’27.9020.42624
415Sergio PerezSauber-Ferrari1’28.4020.92626
510Romain GrosjeanLotus-Renault1’28.4200.94420
612Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1’28.4951.01922
716Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso-Ferrari1’28.5131.03723
83Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes1’28.5161.04016
92Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1’28.8771.40121
109Kimi RaikkonenLotus-Renault1’29.3271.85122
1117Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Ferrari1’29.3641.88826
126Felipe MassaFerrari1’29.7192.24315
1314Kamui KobayashiSauber-Ferrari1’29.7852.30924
1425Charles PicMarussia-Cosworth1’30.0902.61419
1524Timo GlockMarussia-Cosworth1’30.2202.74416
1619Bruno SennaWilliams-Renault1’30.2912.81522
1720Heikki KovalainenCaterham-Renault1’30.3312.85526
1811Paul di RestaForce India-Mercedes1’30.4372.96114
194Lewis HamiltonMcLaren-Mercedes1’30.6173.14116
205Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’31.2073.73120
2121Vitaly PetrovCaterham-Renault1’32.2414.76522
2223Narain KarthikeyanHRT-Cosworth1’32.3494.87317
237Michael SchumacherMercedes1’32.7775.30118
2422Pedro de la RosaHRT-Cosworth1’42.56615.0908

2012 German Grand Prix

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Image © Pirelli/LAT

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “Maldonado on top as Schumacher crashes in the rain”

  1. You have to feel sorry for the teams. They’ve brought some nifty upgrades to test this gp and the last and all it’s done is rain. Poor buggers.

    1. Have Pirelli found a way to control the weather? Everywhere they take these new hard tyres, it rains.

  2. Another rainy FP and dry race weekend. Updates might not be able to switched on. Another set up gamble.

  3. Oh… well, bad luck

  4. Something begins to tell me that almost on every occasion in recent seasons that McLaren have brought a ‘major’ upgrade that it’s rained in Friday FP of the race weekend they’ve introduced it for.

    1. it sure is like that for the second year running now, and wasn’t 2009 a bit like that, when they could not run their update in Silverstone?

  5. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    20th July 2012, 16:40

    Maldonado on pole… then in the refuel he gets mixed with the pack and crashes absurdly with another driver. And finally he states the other driver is a crybaby, while FIA sets another fine PDVSA can easily pay.

    1. On that basis, he has nothing to worry about then, as he’ll be running with a car full of fuel come race day.

      He wont get pole, cant read much into Friday practice at the best of times, let alone when it hammers it down with rain!

  6. Hope Schumacher’s moment doesn’t hinder him for the rest of the weekend.

    Frustrating that we can’t properly evaluate upgrades but tomorrow should be better for the weather.

  7. Since Pirelli came into F1 as the sole tyre supplier, both in 2011 and 2012 the British GP marks the start of a long period of wet races…

    1. I am hoping this year for the first wet Singapore Grand Prix!!!!

  8. These wet races continue to ruin the potential of the better teams, because of which 2012 will be remembered as the season of great parody but in reality a season of some teams getting simply lucky.

    The combination of DRS, Pirelli Tires and far too many wet sessions have made this season one of the least competitive seasons in the last twenty years. How boring, I miss the Schumacher days when the Ferrari kicked everybodys ass. Dominate and Crush, that is how the competition should be handled. Real race fans feel this way don’t they??

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