By Karl KING
July 24 2005

Toyota's pace in qualifying obviously wasn't as bad as it seemed in qualifying, if only the race pace was allowed to shine through.

In what was one of the best races so far this year in my opinion was probably a bitter-sweet event for the Toyota team. No, actually it was probably more bitter-bitter.

It was such an exciting first lap, that for the first time this year, a Formula One race nearly made me wet myself.

However, the reality was that it didn't.

This was because Toyota hero Jarno Trulli got caught in the incident packed action where the Italian was involved in a collision with Takuma Sato and Mark Webber which saw the two Japanese powered teams come out to the pits to repair their men's cars. For poor old Mark Webber however, it would not be so simple, taking what must have seemed like 10 years to get his BMW Williams ready to return to the thick of the action 10 laps down.

Juan Pablo Montoya benefited from the action on the first lap making it up to eleventh, to cross the line second after a close fought battle with British hero Jenson Button. It wasn't all so rosy for McLaren with Finn Kimi Raikkonen retiring from al lead as healthy as himself half way through the race.

Jarno Trulli entered the Hockenheim Pit Lane 6 times during the race, helped along by a drive-through after holding up Juan Pablo under blue flags, while he was trying to actually run his own race with Nick Heidfeld.

Jarno would have just been satisfied to lead his team mate as in practice

Ralf Schumacher had a pretty low-key weekend managing to score 3 points for the team crossing the line behind a bald-tyred brother. An intense lap two before the end saw Fisichella overtake Michael Schumacher for fourth, unfortunately the remaining lap was not long enough for Ralf to make a decisive move on his brother.

This left big headed Alonso cruising to the line holding up 6 fingers to indicate each of his 6 race wins, leaving me screaming that 3 of them were because of the poor reliablility of that Mercedes Benz engine. This has surely Spain's dream of a World Champ in their young hero.

The good news we can take away from Germnay is that Rubens Barrichello failed to score leaving Jarno and Rubens still tied on points in fifth place in the championship, while Toyota remain in 4th, 10 points clear of Williams.

A full Toyota report will follow.