A thrilling and incident filled race saw Lewis Hamilton start from 10th place on the grid and through a series of bad judgment calls the F1 rookie finished off the podium as well as outside the points for the first time in the season. As the drivers were preparing for the warm-up lap it was announced that rain was expected in a few minutes. And it did come, in the form of a downpour on the first lap of the European GP.

As the lights went out to signal the start of the race Felipe Massa got off well passing Alonso and up into second place behind his team mate Raikkonen. Behind them the chaos of the race had started when the two BMW drivers Nick Heidfeld and Nico Rosberg seemed to suffer from brain-fade and came together. Hamilton was already making up places and was already going around the outside of the BMWs when one of the two spun and touched his left rear tyre leaving him with a puncture. And then the rain came down in buckets. The track conditions were deteriorating every second and as Kimi Raikkonen came round the last corner he tried to dive into the pit lane, obviously for a change of tyres but the Finnish Ferrari driver missed the pit lane entry and had to circle round the track for one further lap, very slowly. As all the drivers were diving into the pits to change their tyres to wets or intermediates one driver had called the rain early, [Markus Winkelhock]. He was to start from last place, and upon hearing about the impending rain Mike Gascoyne and the rest of the Spyker team decided that it was worth the risk to start from the pits and change his tyres to the intermediates. Therefore, as everyone else ahead of him went in for the tyre changes Markus Wingelhock led his very first F1 race.

The rain carried on pelting down on the track and flooded corner one of the Nurburgring circuit and a whole stream of cars, 6 in total, aquaplaned off the track. These included Jenson Button, Adrian Sutil, Tonio Liuzzi and Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton kept his head better than everyone else who went off into turn one, besides the pace car which had to cleverly accelerate out the way of an oncoming Liuzzi who was facing the wrong way by the time he whizzed past it. Hamilton was able to keep his engine running for a long time until a tractor could lift him out of the sand and put him back on the track so he could resume his race. Winkelhock took yet another gamble and went into the pits for full wets instead of the intermediates most of the other drivers were on, everyone now following behind the pace car so he was able to retain his lead. One of the winners of the treacherous conditions was clearly David Coulthard who started in 20th place but had worked his way up into 5th.

After 4 laps the race was red-flagged, meaning everyone would line up in the positions they were in 1 lap before the red-flag was waved. The restart would go ahead with the pace car leading the pack for a lap or 2. The cars lined up on the grid and Kimi Raikkonen had done farely well to limit the damage and be starting from 7th, Hamilton was lucky to still be in the race at all but would be down in 17th at the restart and 1 lap down. So the "grid" order for the restart of the race was: 1) Wingelhock 2) Massa 3) Alonso 4) Webber 5) Coulthard 6) Kovalainen 7) Raikkonen

With 56 laps left the race started again behind the safety car. With the new rules of F1 allowing lapped cars to unlap themselves Hamilton passed all the cars ahead of him as well as the safety car to rush around the wet Nurburgring circuit. Both Heidfeld and Trulli changed from their full wets to intermediates, Hamilton also went into the pits but he was changing to the dry tyres. A risky move considering the track was fairly wet. And it definitely worked against him as he fell further and further back off the field. Wtih 54 laps left the safety car came into the pits and immediately the faster cars and different tyres of Massa and Alonso saw them ease past Winkelhock in his Spyker. With 49 laps to go Kimi Raikkonen decided the time was right for the dry tyres, around the same time as Lewis Hamilton sets the fastest lap on his dry tyres. With 48 laps left of the already eventful European GP the rest of the drivers followed suit and pitted for dry tyres. Except for David Coulthard who led the lap for just 1 lap afterwhich he also came in for new dry tyres.

With 46 laps to go the race had calmed down a bit and Markus Winkelhock retired with hydraulic problems causing the demise of his Spyker. 45 laps left and Raikkonen had made his way up into 3rd place already and was catching the front runners Massa and Alonso every lap and the gap had been narrowed down to as little as 0.6 seconds between Alonso and Raikkonen. With 38 laps to go Kimi had closed right up to Alonso and Massa out in front was trading fastest laps with Lewis Hamilton. 3 laps later and curiously Raikkonen had dropped off the back of Alonso again to as much as 1.4 seconds. With 26 laps to go it was obvious that the reason Kimi had dropped back from Alonso was technical problems with his car, as he was struggling now with the car stopping and starting, Kimi fighting his way round the track and almost inot hte pits before his Ferrari finally came to a stop.

With 11 laps to go it was announced that there was even more drama to come with oncoming rain. Alonso had closed the gap between himself and Massa to 4.4 seconds and 2 laps later it was down to 4.8 seconds, and then came the rain. Massa and Alonso both went into the pits immediately and when exiting almost knocked over a few of the Honda pit crew members as he forced his way past Fisichella. That incident might still be looked into by the FIA.

Alonso had much better pace than Massa straight out of the pits and closed down the Brazilian and was all over his gearbox with 6 laps left in the race. Alonso did eventually get past him with 5 laps to go and the 2 touched wheels as Alonso muscled his way through turn 5.

Top 8 finishers:

1) Fernando Alonso
2) Felipe Massa
3) Mark Webber
4) Alex Wurz
5) David Coulthard
6) Nick Heidfeld
7) Robert Kubica
8) Heikki Kovalainen