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The German Grand Prix has been a fixture on the Formula 1 World Championship calendar since 1951, and it has featured every year except 1955, 1960 and 2007.
Over the years we’ve won the race seven times at different incarnations of the Hockenheim and Nurburgring circuits. We’ve also been on pole position 12 times and set seven fastest laps.
It was team founder Bruce McLaren who scored our first podium at the race, bringing his car home third at the fearsome Nurburgring Nordschleife in 1969 after starting from eighth on the grid.
James Hunt scored our first German Grand Prix victory in 1976. He won 30 seconds clear of Jody Scheckter after taking the lead at the restart following Niki Lauda’s crash. Hunt’s team-mate Jochen Mass brought his car home in third.
In 1984 we managed our first German Grand Prix one-two at Hockenheim, with Alain Prost and Niki Lauda. Prost was overtaken from pole position at the start but made up places to take the chequered flag.
We finished one-two again in 1988, but that time it was Ayrton Senna who won ahead of Prost. Senna started on pole position and stayed in the lead throughout the race, whereas Prost fought his way back up to second from fourth place after dropping a couple of places in the opening laps.
Senna and Prost managed another one-two in 1989, completely dominating their opposition. Following Prost’s departure, Senna and new team-mate Gerhard Berger managed a double podium finish in 1990. Senna managed his third German Grand Prix victory in a row, while Berger finished third.
Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard finished also one-two in 1998, with Hakkinen taking a lights-to-flag victory in spite of his car sustaining an oil leak a few laps from home. It was the team’s first German Grand Prix win using a Mercedes-Benz engine.
The pair managed a double podium finish two years later in 2000. Hakkinen was on for a victory but the 30 second lead he had built up over Ferrari’s Rubens Barrichello disappeared after a safety car period.
Ten years later in 2008 Lewis Hamilton drove a blinding race to take victory at Hockenheim. It was his fourth win of the season, and he made superb moves on Felipe Massa and Nelson Piquet Jr to leave the circuit with a four-point lead over Massa in the Drivers’ Championship.
Credit: McLaren (mclaren.com)
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