Reflections on a weekend in Germany

By Ed Gorman

1. We stay in a hotel just a few miles from the circuit which feels more like a youth hostel on the Pennine Way in the late 1960s than a stop in the "glamorous world" of Formula One in 2009. It is run by a couple of German guys and the facilities are of DIY quality and are generally rubbish. But, you know what? We all love it because it's got a bit of character and they love mucking about with us. You ask for wine, for example, and they tell you they've run out. You sit there for some minutes thinking 'I am staying in a hotel for three days with no wine' and then they bring a bottle without further comment. There's a bit of Fawlty Towers going on and it's a great place to review the day over a glass or two (if you can stay awake).

2. The drive from the hotel to the track takes you alongside stretches of the Nordschleife which is a sort of hillside graveyard for motor racers and their cars with lots of painted signatures all over the tarmac. There is no run-off and I gather people are always getting killed there or writing off their cars. We heard of one guy on the Saturday night who piled his beautiful, yellow, high-performance road car - I'm not sure what it was - into the barriers where it caught fire and was totally written off and the poor chap was in tears...that's passion for the sport for you...A load of blokes from McLaren ran it - all 13 miles of it - later that evening. One of them is shortly competing in a triple marathon (82 miles), so the old track in the woods was a mere warm-up for him.

3. The trees, the views, it is all very reminiscent of the nearby classic at Spa. Two tracks in the forested hills, one still very much a class act, the other a shadow of its famous fore-runner just a stones throw away. I ran the new Nurburgring on the Thursday night and couldn't believe how narrow it is in many places which seems very perplexing, given the space to expand. The surface was fairly rough in places and it is far more hilly than it looks on television, especially the climb up from Turn 7 and then again from Turn 11 through the chicane. I don't think it is a special one. It was also bloody windy...

4. The paddock, of course, was dripping in F1 politics. Talk of the breakaway was back; Ari Vatanen was doing the rounds (he looks like a Viking version of Max). In fact, when I first saw him from the side, I thought he was Max. He wears similarly smart suits to the present incumbant of the presidential suite at the Place de la Concorde but I would say his shoes are better. (I accept that that is a fairly ambitious conclusion based on two days but there you have it). Then there was Bernie coming to Germany just after his Hitler thing in The Times. Oooh, that was a little tricky. To cap it all, the rumours started spreading that the Bern-meister was facing being kicked upstairs by CVC. No wonder the racing, yet again, took second place.

5. The "Formula One commercial rights holder" was his usual irrepressible self, however. He behaved himself in public but he had those of us who spent a little time with him privately rolling in the aisles. The point about the end of his career is that it is probably approaching and the genie is out of the bottle (and I think even he is aware of it) but I wouldn't expect anything dramatic on that score in the very near future.

6. On the Saturday night, many of us went to a boxing match in the main arena which they have just built at vast expense next to the track. It was a WBA world middleweight title defence by the German boxer Felix Sturm against his Hamburg stablemate, the Armenian fighter Khoren Gevor. The ultimate untechnical sport, in the sense of reliance on machines (like yachts or cars), we saw two men pit their courage, their strengths, techniques, skills and cunning against each other and it was fascinating. Sturm who won - rather controversially (talk about odd decisions by the stewards in Formula One!) - was the technically superior fighter with quick hands and sudden bursts of controlled violence while Gevor hammered away all night ultimately to no effect and left the ring believing he had been robbed. The bout was watched by a cast of Formula One royalty - that would be, amongst others BCE, Flavio, an impossibly well-groomed Michael Schumacher in blue and white striped shirt with a white collar and a white jacket, Niki Lauda and Timo Glock - and it was an interesting diversion from the normal fare at race weekends.

7. Oh yes, the race. Well it was an absorbing affair from the off. I wonder how many times a driver has been handed a drive-through and then completed it and still won? It has to be said there was a fair amount of scepticism in the press room about the chances of Mark converting his first pole into his first win. He seems to have convinced some judges that he cannot do it when it matters. Does he get nervous or is it just bad luck? Or does he suffer from rushes of blood to the head when the pressure is on? I must admit when the notice appeared on the screen that the stewards were investigating his wheel-bashing moment with Rubens, I thought 'oh no, here we go again.' But I was wrong and Mark drove brilliantly and, most important, did not allow that shock to get him down or panic him. Many of us in that situation would have thrown it away but he kept his cool while events around him conspired to bring the race-win opportunity back to him. (It is almost always like that in Formula One - races cannot be won by a driver alone. It is a team performance for one thing and then what everyone else does on the track - in this case Heikki - is also always critical. That's why we can talk of races "coming" to a driver etc etc).

8. Rubens. Well, he certainly threw the toys out of the hammock at the end, didn't he? This was the first time I have seen the Brawn team creaking under pressure and the first time I have seen Ross looking annoyed. What amazes me about this is that Rubens has been driving in Formula One for 565,000 years and is often said to be a great example of the value of an experienced pilot and so on. I know he is Brazilian and there's a Latin temperament in play, but you would think he would have learned by now to keep his thoughts a little more to himself when his blood is up. There was quite genuine shock at the way he slagged his own team. It is not as if he has not made any mistakes himself this year (and we have never heard him being criticised by his own team). Despite what Ross has since said on this score, I would say it would be a surprise if Rubens was still there next year, though that may depend on what happens during the rest of this year - championship-wise.

9. It seems to be game-on in the battle between Brawn and Red Bull and we should all be delighted about that - especially those of us who have to fly all over the planet to watch the races. But against Red Bull's advance you have to pit the fact that conditions were eerily similar at the Nurburgring to those at Silverstone. It will be very interesting indeed to see what happens at the go-kart track outside Budapest in 10 days time if it is hot - as it often is. Just one other little pointer: Jenson has yet to not finish a race. Soon, one imagines, that run will come to an end.

10. Adrian Sutil. Oh dear. You have to feel sorry for him. Every time he is on course for heroic status, something goes wrong. And twice now Kimi - who is surely on the way out of Maranello - has been involved in his misfortune. Next time Adrian, next time...