Sunday 8th August 1982

Patrick Tambay won the German Grand Prix for Ferrari after his teammate Didier Pironi was injured in practice. Hockenheim had been modified from the year before, with the first chicane being made slower and another chicane added to slow cars through the very fast Ostkurve. Didier Pironi set the fastest practice time, but was seriously injured in qualifying for this Grand Prix and never raced in Formula One again. With the track wet thanks to persistent showers, Pironi was on a quick lap when his Ferrari hit the back of Alain Prost’s slow moving Renault at high speed, vaulting over the top of it before landing tail-first and cartwheeling to a stop in eerie similarity to Gilles Villeneuve’s fatal accident earlier in the season. Pironi survived but suffered severe leg injuries that sidelined him for the rest of the year. He never managed to return to Formula One before his death in 1987. Pironi’s accident also had a profound effect on Prost who never forgot the sight of the Ferrari flying over his car, the crash firming his views on driving F1 cars in the wet where visibility was virtually zero if behind another car.

Thanks to Hockenheim’s long straights, the turbo-charged cars were overwhelmingly dominant in qualifying. Not only did turbo-charged cars take up the first 6 grid positions, but the utmost proof of this was the slowest turbo qualifier Riccardo Patrese, placing 6th, driving a Brabham-BMW was 2.9 seconds faster than the fastest non-turbo qualifier, 7th placed Michele Alboreto, driving a Ford-Cosworth powered Tyrrell.

Since Ferrari never withdrew the injured Pironi, pole position was left empty at the start. Nelson Piquet led the race, but collided with Eliseo Salazar while lapping him at the new Ostkurve chicane. After the two cars came to a stop, an irate Piquet quickly climbed out of his Brabham, approached Salazar, and then punched and kicked Salazar in a rage, which continued for some time after the collision. It was later revealed that Piquet’s BMW engine was suffering mechanical failure and would blow up anyway, had he and Salazar not crashed. Patrick Tambay, driving the lone Ferrari, won his first Formula One race.