The F1 calendar follows the sun, and thus warm afternoons under blue skies are the rule rather than the exception. While the races in South East Asia and the Middle East are always hot, Germany and Hungary often rival them. This year was exceptional. The temperature gauge in the paddock hit 42° on Thursday, and Friday was no cooler. Everyone in the garage received strict and regular instructions to drink plenty of water. And after the sessions, iced towels were passed around. Spare a thought for the fuel technicians wearing their fireproof overalls.

When the plan for the season was formulated, the German Grand Prix was circled for a significant update package. That didn’t happen – because staff at the MTC worked around the clock to get the update onto the cars at Silverstone. That meant a different – though no less busy – programme during the practice sessions on Friday with more long-term learning than would usually be the case, new procedures ironed out and development parts evaluated for use in the second half of the season.

Before travelling to Germany, all the forecasts insisted that, at some point over the weekend, the weather would break. That arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning in the form of some truly titanic thunderstorms. Against the odds, both of Saturday’s sessions were dry – but with the ambient and track temperatures falling 12~15°C, Hockenheim was like a completely different circuit, rendering most of Friday’s data irrelevant. Everyone started from scratch on Saturday morning.

The midfield battle is tight – but it looked even tighter in Hockenheim. This was emphasised by the result of Q1 which saw Carlos sail through in P13 but Lando eliminated P16. The gap between them was 0.112 seconds. Lando was frustrated with his first Q1 knock-out – but it later emerged a minor battery problem had cost him at least the different between qualification and elimination. The team opted to swap out the Energy Store, Control Electronics and MGU-K after qualifying, and start him from the back of the grid.

All through Saturday, the paddock’s weather service forecast a 60 per cent chance of rain. It didn't arrive – but made up for it on Sunday when it rained pretty much all day. Of great significance was the fact no-one really knew how the tyres would behave. Both Wets and Intermediates are a new compound for 2019, and the Wet also has a new shape. While McLaren did a rain tyre test at Paul Ricard last year, Pirelli doesn’t disclose to the teams what they’re testing, making it impossible to say if these are the same tyres or something different. It put everyone in the unusual situation of learning on the job – great for the audience; less comfortable for race engineers and strategists.

Conditions in Hockenheim were about as bad as they could be – which isn’t the same as the weather was as bad as it could be. It wasn’t. Hockenheim introduced doubt: a baseline drizzle occasionally intensifying or stopping, which is far harder to deal with. Much of the race was conducted in the no-man’s land of too wet for dry tyres but dry enough to damage the Inters – with just enough variability to prevent plans being effective. Instead, we had the most communicative race of the season, with drivers and race engineers discussing constantly the state of the tyres, the track and the radar picture.

Fifth place is our best result of the season – but Carlos was definitely glass-half-empty at the flag. His instant reaction was that he’d been punished for running a good race. There was some logic to his position. Running fifth during the crucial third Safety Car period he, like the cars in front of him, opted to stay out, not daring to sacrifice track position. Those further back, with nothing to lose, rolled the dice and were rewarded. Race engineer Tom Stallard took a more phlegmatic view on the in-lap: “If you’re fifth and annoyed Carlos, we’re probably doing well.”

The summer break is generally regarded as the halfway point in the season but in a rather more mathematical sense, that point was passed in Germany, race 11 of 21. The battle to secure fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship is intriguing. We extended our advantage at the German Grand Prix, despite looking a little less competitive than has been the case in recent races. For the neutral – if such a beast exists – it sets up the rest of the season very nicely.