Kimi Raikkonen was left to rue running out of laps as the Lotus driver finished second to championship leader Sebastian Vettel in yesterday’s German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.

The Finn finished just 1.008 seconds behind Vettel with teammate Romain Grosjean finishing third. “We had a pretty good last stint of the race. Maybe some more laps would have helped us, but the race is only 60 laps so you have to do your best with that.

“It was a good day for the team. We wanted to win; we couldn’t, but we scored the most points.”

Grosjean added: “After some difficult races, everything went right today and it was pretty special when I was leading the race. Returning to the podium is naturally a good thing.

“Letting Kimi past at the end of the race was the sensible thing to do as he had more of a chance of going for the win.”

Of the other Oxfordshire teams, Williams’ duo of Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas finished 15th and 16th respectively as the team marked their 600th race.

Maldonado said: “It was a good race for us today as we put everything together and we were on for some points.

“It’s disappointing to finish where we did, but we have to look at the positives and move forward.”

Bottas added: “We had a few problems getting away from the line. We also lost time in both pitstops so we need to work out what happened.”

The safety car was deployed when Jules Bianchi’s Banbury-based Marussia rolled backwards across the track after he went off with an engine failure. His teammate Max Chilton was 19th.

The Leafield-based Caterham duo of Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde were 17th and 18th.

RESULT
1  S Vettel (Red Bull) 1hr 41mins 14.711secs, 2 K Raikkonen +1.008, 3 R Grosjean (Lotus) +05.830, 4  F Alonso (Ferrari) +07.721, 5 L Hamilton (Mercedes) +26.927, 6 J Button (McLaren) +27.996, 7 M Webber (Red Bull) +37.562, 8 S Perez (McLaren) +38.306, 9 N Rosberg (Mercedes) +46.821, 10 N Hulkenberg (Sauber) +49.892.
Other local teams: 15 P Maldonado (Williams) 01.929, 16 V Bottas (Williams) lapped,17 C Pic (Caterham) lapped, 18 G van der Garde (Caterham)  20 lapped, 19 M Chilton (Marussia) lapped, 21 J Bianchi  (Mar-ussia) retired, 21 laps.
DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP
1  S Vettel 157pts, 2 F Alonso 123, 3 K Raikkonen 116, 4 L Hamilton 99, 5 M Webber 93, 6 N Rosberg 84, 7 F Massa 57, 8 R Grosjean 41, 9 P Di Resta 36, 10  J Button 33.
Constructors’ championship
1  Red Bull 250, 2 Mercedes 183, 3  Ferrari 180, 4  Lotus 157, 5 Force India 59, 6  McLaren 49, 7 Toro Rosso 24, 8 Sauber 7, 9 Williams 0, 10 Marussia 0, 11 Caterham 0.