By David Coulthard 6:41PM BST 25 Jul 2011
It was instructive to hear Lewis Hamilton remark after his win at the Nurburgring on Sunday how fresh he felt. After a week off, in which he trained twice daily, he said he was still full of energy at the end of the race.
Champagne moment: Lewis Hamilton appears to have raised his game thanks to a little bit of rest and relaxation Photo: GETTY IMAGES
You will remember, following their disastrous weekend at Silverstone two weeks ago, how both Lewis and Jenson Button complained that they were being flogged too hard by McLaren's PR department and desperately needed a break.
They did not win much sympathy from the public if the message boards on the Telegraph website are anything to go by; there were plenty of comments along the lines of ‘I’d swap a few days a year taking sponsors on hot laps around Brands Hatch for a few million quid in the bank’.
It is a fair cop. And it is important to keep things in perspective. These are hugely privileged racing drivers; they are not out fighting wars or living in abject poverty.
But when it comes to performing at the highest level, preparation is key.
"Flying to and from events (even on private jets as some of them do), sleeping in different hotels night after night, driving to and from tracks, smiling, shaking hands. It is not hard, but it is exhausting.
It is not so much about what the drivers are doing, it is about what they are not doing; exercising, recovering, focusing on the next race.
McLaren’s drivers are hardest hit in this respect since McLaren have a different business model to the other top teams.
It involves a few high profile sponsors such as Vodafone, Hugo Boss and Johnnie Walker, who all have a specific number of days with the drivers written into their contracts.
In many respects it is good for Lewis that the equally marketable Jenson has arrived to shoulder some of the burden, because when it was him with Heikki Kovalainen it did not take a genius to guess which driver the sponsor was going to want for their contracted time.
Red Bull, by contrast, bought a team to market its brand and sell fizzy drinks. Other sponsors have since arrived, but essentially the team is its own advertising vehicle and the external demands on the drivers are far less than at McLaren.
It is all about finding the right balance because there is no doubt that mental and physical fatigue will cost a driver in terms of his performance.
These are finely-tuned athletes we are talking about — believe me, they are supremely fit — and in a sport where hundredths of a second can make all the difference they need every ounce of concentration they can get.
It would not surprise me in the least if Lewis’s time off last week to rest and train — he cancelled a sponsors’ trip to India a fortnight ago to help him in this respect — had a major bearing on his sensational performance in Germany.
We will never know for sure, just as we will never know whether Sebastian Vettel’s unusually subdued performance was in some way linked to the additional demands he felt racing in front of his home crowd; the increased PR demands, media coverage, weight of expectation, family and friends in the crowd et cetera.
I believe the last driver to win his home grand prix was Felipe Massa for Ferrari in Sao Paulo in 2008 so perhaps there is a direct link between PR demands and performance? It’s one hypothesis anyway.
As far as the wider picture is concerned, the German Grand Prix has brought the season to life once again.
The top three teams were all unbelievably well-matched at the Nurburgring and it will be fascinating to see whether that holds true at the Hungaroring this weekend.
Can McLaren and Ferrari stay with Red Bull? Will they pull ahead?
Will Seb rediscover his va-va-voom or will he start driving for points rather than wins? Jenson went to Silverstone in 2009 on the back of six wins in seven races and never won another race all year as he protected his lead.
I tend to think Seb is young enough to absorb the hit of last weekend and not tighten up, but we shall see. After a few days rest of course.
Credit: The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
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