Nick Heidfeld sure isn’t new to criticism about his driving skills and last season rumors of him losing his drive in F1 all together were swirling around. I have always been an advocate for Heidfeld and continue to be. Last season I saw qualifying problems for an important part of the season that he managed his way out of. What I fail to understand is all of the negativity surrounding Nick when he put up a truck load of points, stood on the podium, was part of the BMW Sauber 1-2 finish in Canada and set fastest laps of races.

Think what you wish about Heidfeld, but when it comes to driving in the rain and coming up with a great pit and tire strategy on the fly he’s fast becoming a ‘rain master’. Now I wouldn’t put him up with names like Jackie Stewart or Michael Schumacher for example, but this quiet driver from Germany is once again doing it quietly. By quietly I mean not from the front where the TV cameras are 98% of the time, but from farther down the order. Last season it was Spa Belgium where his strategy put him on superior tires in the rain and with his exciting passing skills overtook 5 cars on his way to a podium. Next was Monza. He didn’t manage a podium, but once again his wet weather skills and tire strategy moved him to 5th. The race belonged to Vettel who had every camera glued on him leaving Nick once again quietly doing his job. Last but not least we can’t forget Silverstone where he finished 2nd once again.

I saw a pole on F1fanatic where the question asked was who of a list of drivers in 2008 do you think is the best wet weather driver. Overwhelmingly Lewis Hamilton was the choice with 424 votes. Nick Heidfeld was on the list, but had a paltry 15 votes.

Now he’d done it again in Malaysia when starting from 9th on the grid and finishing 2nd. How did this happen? Heidfeld was the heaviest car on the track using his lower grid position to load the car with fuel and to hopefully run as close to when the rain started as possible. By the time he came in for his first pit stop the rain had begun lightly and most of the leaders on light fuel loads had come in already and put on intermediate tires. It was almost a timing mistake when the rain only came lightly and Timo GLock on intermediate tires was 8 seconds a lap faster than him. He then began requesting a pit to change to inter mediates and was told to stay out a little longer. When finally granted a pit and tires almost worn to the rim, the rain came hard and fast and Heidfeld made the decision himself to stay out. Now, with a downpour just about every driver in front of him made a mad dash to the pits for full wets that vaulted him into 2nd place where he ended up when the race was red flagged and finally called off.

Jenson Button was clearly the fastest driver with the best car and deserved a lot of credit, but what was lost through TV coverage was that Heidfeld had a serious chance of winning the grand prix.

From his words:

”The team told me that I was on P1 when Button came in for extreme wets. I was on the back straight then. In normal circumstances I would have actually gone past him but with the rain he turned on track again 200 metres in front of me. Otherwise I could have even brought home the race win.”

Call it a bit of luck, but Heidfeld’s smooth driving skill allowed him to save his tires and make them last until just the right time. That combined with a heavy fuel load to start and some quick thinking on his part worked perfectly and clearly better than Ferrari with Raikkonen.