Lewis Hamilton's Hockenheim Win May Have Decided Formula One Championship

        In every season, there is a race in which you can literally see momentum shifting and the championship turning in favor of one driver, as his opponents helplessly look on knowing there is nothing that can be done about it.

        It occurs when one driver finally asserts himself as the best, while the others seem incapable of mounting any type of charge, even if the equipment they use and cars they drive say they should.

        Such a race occurred on Sunday when Lewis Hamilton collected his fourth victory of the year, and second in as many races.

        Felipe Massa seemed to be in position to retake the top spot in the standings when, after the safety car was deployed for Timo Glock’s hard crash (which he thankfully walked away from without serious injury) he pitted while McLaren left Hamilton on the track.

        Once again, strategy was going to determine the race. And once again, Ferrari seemed to have McLaren beat; the group from Woking had missed the call.

        When the race restarted, Hamilton remained the leader, but he had one stop to make. Surely, there was no way he would pull out a large enough margin to stay ahead of Massa.

        Simply put, he was left as a sitting duck and would ultimately lose ground to him and fall behind in the championship. It seemed that the title chase began to tip back toward Massa and Ferrari.

        However, as grim as the prospects seemed, Hamilton was not going to go away with out a fight. In a drive akin to many of the great ones we saw from Michael Schumacher, Hamilton began turning laps two seconds faster than anyone else.

        Still, there was no way he would be able to go fast enough in the amount of time given (about 10 laps) to pull out a sufficient enough gap on Massa (he being the most important because the drivers in between them would also have to stop, or so we thought, and he was Hamilton’s closest running title rival).

        The subsequent pit stop saw him fall behind the scarlet-colored Ferrari. All hope seemed to be lost, and Massa seemed to be handed an easy win.

However, things would not turn up in Massa’s favor. First, there was the surprising revelation that Nelson Piquet Jr. was on a one-stop strategy (not a two-stop one), meaning he was the lead driver and in position for the win, not Massa.

Still though, Massa was assured to finish ahead of Hamilton, which is equally as important as winning given the tight championship battle at the moment. Things remained positive for Massa.

“Not so fast,” said Hamilton. After his stop, he managed to work his way back up to third, right behind Massa, and was still clicking off unbelievably fast laps and eventually caught the Brazilian.

The two proceeded to have the best on-track duel we’ve seen in a while, with Hamilton prevailing. His next pass on Piquet was slightly easier, and he then cruised to victory.

While I know Hamilton has been hyped beyond imagination, his performance in this race was simply phenomenal. His driver is the best we've seen Michael Schumacher at Magny-Cours in 2004 and Kimi Raikkonen at Suzuka in 2005 (both of which, I think, were tied for the greatest drives of this century).

The McLaren team chose the wrong strategy when they left him on the track and didn’t pit him during the safety car period; he should not have won that race.

His victory was due to the driver and only the driver (even though he was quite thankful of the team). McLaren tried to lose the race for him, but Hamilton stole it back. It was his finest race of his career.

While Hamilton’s victory was well-deserved and quite pleasing for him to begin with, it was made all the sweeter when you look at the performances of his title rivals. As great as Hamilton was, his rivals were equally as poor.

I’ll start with Felipe Massa. It appeared that this race would be a fresh, new page for him, after a more than forgettable race at Silverstone. He seemed to immediately pick back up, as he laid down the quickest lap in Q1 of qualifying, and was on pole in Q3 until Hamilton snatched it away at the last moment.

Plus, with McLaren’s strategic blunder, it appeared that Massa would end up, at the very least, ahead of Hamilton at the finish, something which would see him pull back ahead in the championship. Instead, Massa settled for a disappointing third.

As I watched Hamilton go past, I could also see Massa’s hopes of a 2008 Driver’s title go with him; any confidence and momentum Massa had regained was lost in that instant and will be tough to regain.

Massa’s teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, called this race a “must win.” Unfortunately for him, he was never even close. The car’s balance was off all weekend, and a sixth-place finish was actually the best he could have probably done.

Plus, his confidence in the team may now be shaken, with his admission that McLaren is superior to Ferrari after Hockenheim. Ferrari may be in the best position to win the Constructor’s title (given their margin over BMW Sauber and McLaren), but neither driver may now have the confidence, or car apparently, to overtake Hamilton in the championship.

Finally, Robert Kubica and his unlikely stake in this year’s title chase may be all but over after his performance this past weekend. Like Raikkonen, Kubica struggled with the car all weekend, and couldn’t fix the handling gremlins in the race, as he eventually finished seventh.

Certainly, he was not expected to be in the hunt, at least realistically, considering the BMW Sauber, while competitive, can’t seem to consistently match and/or surpass the pace of either the Ferrari or the McLaren.

Kubica is the darling underdog in this year’s chase, but rarely does the underdog have enough to win it all, at least in auto racing.

He and the BMW team will certainly be a force, but next year. I don’t think they have enough to make a run this year, given their performance in Hockenheim.

Lewis Hamilton may now only lead the championship by four points and is far from clinching the title. However, his performance this past weekend may very well have sucked the life out of his competitors.

Silverstone was the race where he said “I’m back...” but Hockenheim was where he finished that sentence, with an authoritative “…and this championship is MINE.”