The Mercedes team experienced a nightmare race at the home Grand Prix in Hockenheim.

Valtteri Bottas had an accident, Lewis Hamilton wanted to give up before the end of the race, and was lucky enough to inherit ninth place. Jacques Villeneuve believes, however, that the German weekend was only a “slip-up”.

“That was just a slip and Lewis had such a great run [in the past races], now it was a weekend to forget. That can happen”, says the out-spoken world champion of the ’97.

Villeneuve’s appraisal of Hamilton concludes that Lewis was lucky not to be given a bigger penalty or warning as the incident at the last corner was under the safety car. Hamilton flew off only a few moments after Charles Leclerc did at the same location on lap 29 and received a five-second penalty when driving back into the pit lane in violation of the rules.

Despite another spin, he fought his way back to eleventh position and after the race profited from the penalty for the Alfa drivers, thus claiming 9th spot and 2 points.

This allowed him to extend his World Championship lead over Valtteri Bottas to 41 points. The Finn threw away his race after the first corner with a spin. “Bottas had a more difficult weekend because he wasn’t in a position to make a mistake,” says Villeneuve.

“Lewis was out [on points] and Bottas could have made up a lot of points in the World Championship. That was a little harder to cope with than the result for Lewis,” he believes. In general, the course of the race reminded him of last year, only in reverse roles.

“Ferrari had the World Championship already loosely in his pocket and Vettel put the car into the wall in the wet. Lewis started from 14th place and won”. With the technical problems of Ferrari on Saturday and Vettel’s last grid position, Villeneuve already thought that the German would show off on Sunday.

“I thought, ‘Okay, that means something’s going to happen to Lewis’. Vettel will win the race or be second or something. And they’ll turn it around. And that’s exactly what happened. That’s racing.”

Renault admits trick DRS increases HP & disclose total power output

You know I hate doing these types of articles, but sometimes a very juicy story appears on my favourite German F1 and Motorport website Auto Motor und Sport, I don’t have time to regurgitate it with my opinion thrown in, so I just translate it for you, the valued TJ13 reader.

In essence, the Renault team have admitted their exact…… READ MORE