1992 German F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: German Grand Prix
Track: Hockenheimring
Weather: sunny, dry, warm
Nigel Mansell won his 29th F1 World Championship race at the 1992 German F1 GP today. The Williams driver started from pole and won on the Hockenheim circuit for the second time. It was also his eighth win of the season and the 59th win for the Williams F1 team.
A pit-lane shove and a paddock under siege
Hockenheim was supposed to be Michael Schumacher's coronation, and instead it nearly became the scene of his first paddock brawl. At the FOCA private test eight days before the race, Ayrton Senna walked into Benetton's garage convinced the young German had baulked him on a flying lap and, in front of a knot of mechanics, shoved Schumacher hard against a pit wall. Witnesses claimed there was a slap. Crew members had to step between them before the argument went further. It was the third flashpoint of a feud that had bubbled through Brazil and erupted in France, where Schumacher had pitched Senna into the gravel at Magny-Cours. By the time the circus rolled into the forest, both men had agreed, through clenched teeth, to call the matter closed.
The clash only added to the noise around Schumacher's first home Grand Prix as a winner. More than 130,000 spectators streamed through the gates, the largest German crowd since the Caracciola era. Schumacher's private life was being dissected daily in Bild, including the news that he had stolen his girlfriend Corinna from his former Mercedes Junior stablemate Heinz-Harald Frentzen. "When I saw the hysteria around Boris Becker, I never imagined the other side," he sighed. "Now I do." Beyond the personality cult, the paddock was consumed by the politics of "commercial fuel" for 1993 and the FISA's surprise reduction of tyre width from 18 to 15 inches, a decision that had Goodyear threatening to walk. Honda's confirmed withdrawal at season's end left Senna openly speculating about Williams. "Ayrton wants the Williams-Renault at any price," his close friend Mauricio Gugelmin admitted. "It is not a caprice."
Williams cruise, McLaren are over a second adrift
On Hockenheim's bump-strewn new surface, resurfaced once and still rippled at the second chicane, the active-suspension FW14B was untouchable. The Williams pair simply glided where everyone else jolted. Mansell banged in a 1m37.960s on Friday afternoon, his ninth pole in ten races, and rode out Saturday untroubled. Patrese needed the second day to sort his own active hydraulics before joining him on the front row. Senna and Berger lined the McLaren-Honda up third and fourth, more than a full second adrift, and Jean Alesi muscled the difficult Ferrari F92A to fifth, three seconds off the pace and convinced his car deserved the rebuild promised for Monza. Schumacher would start sixth in the Benetton, his first time using the new Ford-Cosworth Series VII V8 in race trim, with Martin Brundle's sister car ninth after a couple of spins.
Behind the front-runners the stories piled up. Ligier-Renault, of all things, locked out the third row of fast cars in qualifying terms: Erik Comas was a stunning seventh and Thierry Boutsen eighth, both squeezing real pace from the V10 despite recurring transmission failures. Karl Wendlinger put the March-Ilmor a fine tenth on a track he had grown up watching. Ivan Capelli's miserable Ferrari season hit a new low when, studying his sector times, he was told by Niki Lauda that "if you have been driving like this for twelve years, you have been wrong since the start." Lauda had already informed Capelli on Montezemolo's behalf that he would be released. At Andrea Moda, Perry McCarthy was allowed precisely one out-lap with a stricken engine before being told to park; the new "sporting director" Sergio Zago had quietly admitted to him that he had been hired only to satisfy a FISA paperwork requirement.
Mansell's "puncture", Senna's no-stop bet
Patrese stole the start. His gearbox flicked from first to third the moment he released the clutch, and he slingshotted past his team-mate into the Nordkurve. By the exit of the first long straight Mansell was back ahead, braking later into the chicane, and within two laps the Williams pair had walked away from the McLarens. Senna and Berger ran nose-to-tail in third and fourth, Schumacher led the second Benetton ahead of Alesi, and the order at the front of the field was almost embarrassingly tidy, two Williams, two McLarens, two Benettons, two Ferraris, two Ligiers, two Lotuses.
The race ignited when Mansell's dashboard flashed a puncture warning on lap 14. There was no puncture, but the Englishman ducked into the pits anyway and took on fresh tyres in 8.1 seconds, rejoining third. Berger, hearing something rattle on his McLaren, came in at the same time and lost fourteen seconds; he soldiered on for another six laps with an ailing engine before parking. Five tours later, Mansell was already in Senna's slipstream. He tried the outside line into the first chicane, was rebuffed, and on the next attempt at the Ostkurve scampered up the escape road. By the end of the lap he was past on the back straight. Senna had already made up his mind: with Mansell, Berger and Patrese all bound for the pits, he would gamble on going the distance on the Goodyear C compound he had started on. Patrese stopped two laps later and came out fourth, behind Schumacher.
Patrese loses his head, Senna keeps his
For ten laps Patrese turned the race into theatre. He hounded Schumacher relentlessly through the long straights of the Motodrom, lunging at the Ostkurve, feinting at every chicane, only for the 23-year-old to stand his ground with cold-blooded discipline. The crowd roared. Patrese finally got past on lap 33 when Schumacher overcooked his braking after a lap-long battle round the back of the circuit, and then he set his sights on Senna. The fastest lap, his 13th and final one in Formula One, came on lap 36, 1m41.591s, but the McLaren's V12 horsepower kept frustrating him on the straights, and his tyres were now wilting under the assault.
Senna defended like a man with nothing left to lose, slamming the door at the final chicane on lap 39 and again on lap 44. On the very last tour Patrese rolled the dice one more time, diving inside the Brazilian at the Onkokurve before the Stadium complex. He braked too hard, on a dirty patch of asphalt, and spun gently into the infield grass. The engine stalled. "Ayrton has nothing to reproach himself for. He defended his place sportingly," Patrese conceded afterwards, while reserving rather more bitter words for Schumacher's "shifting lines." But in the pit-lane post-mortem Riccardo's bigger problem was visible to everyone: after ten races in the season's quickest car, he still had no win and no pole. "He remains a driver of great class," wrote one observer, "but his inability to adapt to active suspension has dealt a heavy blow to his reputation."
Hungary in sight
Mansell rolled across the line five seconds clear, jolting on shredded tyres but home for an eighth win in ten races. Senna's second place, his first points since Monaco, owed everything to a cold tactical brain. "Theoretically I should have changed tyres, but that would have condemned me to finishing behind four or five cars I couldn't pass," he explained. "I changed strategy, drove as cleanly as possible to preserve the tyres, and went to the end. It was painful." Schumacher took his fifth podium of the year in front of an adoring grandstand, with Brundle, nursing a vicious back injury, hauling the second Benetton home fourth. Alesi was fifth and Comas a deserved sixth for Ligier.
Mansell now stood on 76 points to Patrese's 36. Four points clear of his team-mate at the Hungaroring would seal the title that had eluded him through three previous near-misses. Asked about it in parc fermé, he refused to be drawn. "The championship? No comment. No, nothing. When you've already chased it three times without catching it…" Down the paddock, John Barnard was completing the formalities of his return to Ferrari, and Renault's Bernard Dudot was muttering that the RS4 engine might appear in Hungary in case Honda or Ford got any clever ideas. For one weekend, at least, the noise of Hockenheim had drowned out everything except a Williams droning past in third gear.
Classification 1992 German F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:41.591 min by Riccardo Patrese (Williams FW14B) in lap 36
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