Lewis Hamilton has the chance for immediate payback following his loss to Sebastian Vettel at Silverstone almost two weeks ago, as Formula 1 returns to the Ferrari driver's homeland for the first time in two years for the German Grand Prix.

The British driver, who announced the long-awaited extension to his contract at Mercedes earlier on Thursday, fell eight points behind the Heppenheim native as a controversial move by Kimi Raikkonen on Lap 1 saw Lewis fight back to second from the back of the field.

And with an important 10 days ahead, with two races before the summer break, it is imperative that Hamilton stays on terms with Vettel, particularly as the next event in Hungary is likely to be a tough one for the Brackley-based team.

Once again it is the historic circuit at Hockenheim which assumes the hosting duties, with the German GP taking place biannually because the equally renowned Nurburgring hasn't been able to afford the Formula 1 race since 2013.

Of course, nowadays the layout is much different from the original which used to be a sequence of high-speed blasts through the forest split up by chicanes with the current incarnation of Hockenheim created in 2002.

The first half of the lap is still dominated by straights with the curving 200mph through Parabolika to the hairpin at Turn 6 also the main overtaking place on the circuit.

But now there are two technical sections with the track turning right into a tight left-hander at Turn 8, in front of the Mercedes-Benz grandstand, before re-joining the old circuit to enter the famous 'Stadium', a series of slower corners surrounded by stands capable of holding upto 120,000 people.

A battle too close to call

Though quite a simple circuit, it does create close, exciting racing and predicting how this weekend will play out is particularly tricky.

That is because this is the first time the current car designs have visited Hockenheim, so it will be interesting to see how the higher downforce impacts corners such as the high-speed Turn 1 and the Mobilkurve entering the stadium.

The best comparison is perhaps with the Red Bull Ring which hosted the Austrian GP three weeks ago and saw Mercedes dominate before both cars retired from the race.

Both circuits are less power sensitive than Silverstone and the corners require a good level of downforce with that now Mercedes' main strength against Ferrari.

Vettel at home though is likely to be tough to beat and the differences between the Silver Arrow and the Scuderia is likely to be the same few hundredths of a second as it was in Britain.

Red Bull also can't be ruled out because of the technical second half of the lap and also the big braking zones into Turns 2 & 6 which is their main areas of strength against the top two.

It is possible though that only Max Verstappen will be representing the Milton Keynes-based outfit with Daniel Ricciardo expecting to take the grid penalty for a new engine that has been looming since Canada.

Haas to maintain midfield might?

Entering the midfield where, in recent races, it has been Haas who have had the pace but not always the ability to maximise the performance.

That was certainly the case at Silverstone as again Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen sat as the 'best of the rest' before colliding at the start and later, Grosjean again crashing out this time with Carlos Sainz.

There's no reason why Hockenheim won't be a strong circuit for the American outfit and their main rivals could well be hoping on more self-harm to boost their chances.

Renault also need a boost after the various incidents made the final result of Nico Hulkenberg better than it perhaps should have been.

On a less power-sensitive circuit, they should be able to compete with Haas and also Sauber, who are emerging a genuine top 10 threats consistently with both their cars and not just the strong performance of star driver Charles Leclerc.

Force India, McLaren and Toro Rosso will be the three teams looking to pick up any scraps in terms of points and likely face each other to avoid early eliminations in qualifying.

Pirelli look to mix up the strategies

Perhaps their best opportunities could come with tyres with Pirelli bringing the Ultrasoft, Soft and Medium compounds.

Traditionally, Hockenheim is quite stressful on the rear tyres and with temperatures expected to be quite high, that could well lead to a multi-stop strategy if the Ultras offer a big enough performance advantage over a single lap.

Finally, Williams will likely continue to bring up the field as they start to bring solutions to the problems that have left them so far behind this season.

At Silverstone, a stalling problem with a new rear wing caused the spins for Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll in qualifying and on a technical track like Hockenheim those kinds of flaws will only be exaggerated.

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