How the German GP will unfold

A lot of the teams this evening are talking about tomorrow's race being one of those wet/dry, chaotic races with loads of pit stops as the conditions change.

I'm sure that Mark Webber would like a nice uncomplicated race, in the dry, so that he could convert his well-earned pole position and car advantage into a first GP victory. Meanwhile plenty of drivers with nothing to lose, like Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen and Adrian Sutil will be going for it, taking risks and strategy gambles in the hope of nicking an unexpected win.

Sutil did an amazing job today, not just earning a place in the top ten for the first time, but also carrying a lot of fuel and still qualifying in seventh place, ahead of the Ferraris. Allowing for the weight of the fuel he is also quicker than Kovalainen in sixth place.

Sebastian Vettel is particularly concerned about the McLarens as they will have a big advantage at the start if it is dry, thanks to their KERS system.

Today was a day for cool heads and as I was sitting there in the post qualifying TV interviews with the top three drivers I was thinking that  it is no coincidence that they have 589 Grand Prix starts between them. Experience combined with instinct are what give them the assurance to make the right choices at the right times. Rubens Barrichello was very sure footed, making a brave call for slicks in the second qualifying session when Jenson Button had just gone out on intermediates. He was dead right and Button quickly copied him and made it through to the top ten shoot out.

We've seen already this weekend how quickly the track dries out when the rain stops and how much faster the slicks are than the intermediates when that happens.

So it should be a really exciting race. The Brawn team has the lightest cars in the top ten and that is because they wanted to make darned sure that both their drivers were up at the front, out of trouble.

If you look at the table below you'll see that Hamilton had a great run in qualifying today, faster than the Brawns when you allow for the extra weight of fuel he was carrying. McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh estimates that the new aerodynamic package which is only on Hamilton's car this weekend, is worth around 7/10ths of a second per lap.

Fuel weights and pit stop predictions

1.   Webber       Red Bull-Renault       661.0  Lap 21
 2.  Barrichello  Brawn-Mercedes         647.0  Lap 15

 3.  Button       Brawn-Mercedes         644.0  Lap 14

 4.  Vettel       Red Bull-Renault       661.0  Lap 21

 5.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes       654.5  Lap 18

 6.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes       664.0  Lap 22

 7.  Sutil        Force India-Mercedes   678.5  Lap 28

 8.  Massa        Ferrari                673.5  Lap 26

 9.  Raikkonen    Ferrari                674.0  Lap 26

10.  Piquet       Renault                676.0  Lap 27

11.  Heidfeld     BMW-Sauber             681.0* Lap 29

12.  Alonso       Renault                668.2* Lap 24

13.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota        683.6* Lap 30

14.  Trulli       Toyota                 683.7* Lap 30

15.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota        689.6* Lap 32

16.  Kubica       BMW-Sauber             673.5* Lap 26

17.  Buemi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari     674.5* Lap 26

18.  Fisichella   Force India-Mercedes   662.5* Lap 21

19.  Glock        Toyota                 662.3* Lap 21

20.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Ferrari     689.5* Lap 32

* means the fuel load they have elected to run.

Glock has a three place grid penalty for blocking Alonso in Q1