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Hamilton Heavily Crashes Car in Hockenheim Practice

Lewis Hamilton did not have the practice session of his life on Friday morning at the Hockenheim circuit, as he heavily crashed his MP4-25 70 minutes into the FP1. In a session affected by rain in its first half, the British driver attempted to score a fast lap on a drier circuit with 20 minutes to go, but lost control of his car and hit the wall.

It all happened in Turn 3, when Hamilton wrongly approached the corner and immediately tried to correct it by turning the steering wheel right. On a still pretty wet track, that maneuver got his car to turn right itself and go over the grass and right into the wall. Three corners of his car were destroyed completely.

The car is damaged – heavily,” Hamilton was heard telling his engineers via radio, before making a quick exit from the car.

The worst part about it was that the updated blown diffuser McLaren was preparing for Hockenheim was also severely damaged, and it's now likely that Hamilton will complete this weekend without this particular part on the MP4-25. Meaning he'll probably hope for rain in order to have a better shot at matching his last result on this track, the victorious 2008 German Grand Prix.

The first 90 minutes of action on the German track ended with a German driver on top of the scoring reports, Force India's Adrian Sutil, who once again disclosed some brilliant driving on semi-rain conditions to finish more than one second ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

The championship front-runners did not score very good times on Friday morning, Sebastian Vettel emerging in 11th place, Mark Webber in 14th place, Lewis Hamilton in 17th place and Fernando Alonso in 19th place. Only Jenson Button managed to get into the Top 10, with a 3rd place performance, almost a tenth of a second behind Massa.
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