Our top pictures from the Eifel Grand Prix

Haas F1 photographer Andy Hone has picked out this shot from the eventually cancelled FP1 session on Friday morning, as his choice of shot from the weekend.

Andy's Take:  "Friday at the Nurburgring was a strange day. I came in on Thursday tasked with getting some imagery of Formula 2 driver Callum Ilott, who was being given his big chance to drive a Grand Prix car during the first practice session. 

"After all the preparation we made he was unfortunately forced to wait for his FP1 debut as the conditions at the track were too poor to start either session. Kevin Magnussen came to the garage first thing, dropped off his helmet in the garage and returned to his room. 

"Callum was hanging around for most of the session clinging on to any hope he’d be able to get in and at least do a lap in the VF20. After I had shot enough of Callum, I was at a bit of a loose end in terms of what I could get. 

"In an attempt to do something different, during engine warm ups the red flashing light on the back of the car paired with the faint pouring smoke from the Ferrari power unit, visually often looks quite cool but I don’t normally have the time to work on getting a nice shot of it. 

"It’s quite tricky as it’s an LED light that is very bright and behaves strangely with cameras. The outcome was this, almost soul-stirring visual with the Ferrari V6 Turbo purring away in the background."

 

Nice threads: Scheduled for a Friday FP1 drive at the Nurburgring, Ferrari Young Driver Academy’s Callum Ilott got into his Haas overalls for the first time on Thursday morning. Andy Hone capturing images for the media in various locations.

 

Extraction faces: Every weekend, the at-track medical team perform an emergency car extraction should the worst happen, during a race weekend. This week it was our team’s turn. Being the lightest member of the garage crew, electrician Troy pulled the short straw! It turns out an emergency extraction doesn’t always produce the most flattering photos!

 

Wheelie fun: Romain and his trainer Kim pop a couple of wheelies during their track ride on Thursday afternoon.

 

Rain, rain go away: Callum watches on as the time ticks away on his FP1 opportunity. Thick fog meant that it was unsafe for the medical helicopter to reach its destination in Koblenz, location of the nearest trauma center. With the Nurburgring’s relatively remote location, the Koblenz hospital, which is around a 45 minute drive from the circuit, would take too long to reach by road, in an emergency.

 

Rain stops play: Engineer Mark watches the pit wall screens as the bleak weather radar, with swathes of yellow and green, show the poor weather in the Eifel mountains region was set to stay for the day. FP1 and eventually FP2 were both culled as a result of the fog.

 

Finally on track: After all of Friday’s interruptions, we were left with just 60 minutes of preparation time, in Saturday’s FP3, to be ready for qualifying. Here, Kevin is captured flying through turn 1.

 

Ups and downs of Quali: Kevin came alive in Q1, posting a time good enough for P12 to get him into Q2. In that session, he couldn’t quite find those heights, but had got pretty much everything he could from the VF-20 to get there. He qualified P15, with Romain starting alongside in P16.

 

Best view in the house: With ticket numbers limited for the Eifel GP, if you missed out, you had to get creative! Some eager racing fans caught a glimpse of Sunday’s race action from on high, in a hot air balloon.

 

Keep pushing for the points: Romain adopted an alternative strategy from the rest of the field in the race, with a mediums to hard strategy. After lasting 28 laps on the yellows, the Frenchman switched up for hards, and aided by a safety car period, was able to keep his tires in shape and maintain the pace in the final laps of the race, claiming his first points of the season with P9.