The race was being closely percieved by German fans as both the Schumacher brothers were in for a intriguing battle for the first place on the podium and they didnt disappoint them either. The start was good for all the top six drivers as they left the start line cleanly without any problems with the launch controls. Michael Schumacher and Ralf Schumacher set the pace of the race with fast laps at the very begining. They seemed to be dropping David Coulthard behind with the sheer power of their engines. Ralf was driving flawlessly and was eyeing the long striaight as an area to slipstream past brother Michael. Behind the leaders, Rubens Barrichello was having a great time as he was streaming past drivers one by one. He overtook Jarno Trulli and David Coulthard with ease and raced behind Ralf Schumacher. He set a few fastest laps before he tried to power past Ralf at the hair pin turn, but, unfortunately for him, spun off the track into 11th position. He was thus racing behind Juan Pablo Montoya, who was overtaken shortly ago by Mika Hakkinen.
In the intermediate stages of the race, the positions were still the same, with Michael, Ralf as leaders, David Coulthard on 3rd, with Trulli, Panis and Kimi Raikkonen following closely. Suddenly at the end of the first straight into a corner, Montoya misjudged a turn, hit the kerb and banged into the walls. As Rubens Barrichello, who was closely behind Montoya, tried to take evasive action, spun into the opposite wall, to end the race for both of them. The yellow flags were waved to allow the marshals clear the debris resulted out of the crash. This was good news for David Coulthard as he was able to make up for the huge gap between him and the leaders. But he failed to capitalise on it as he had some manouvering problems with his Mclaren, which never seemed to match the sheer power of the BMW and Ferrari engines ahead. Later it was reported that he had front suspension problems due to the absence of a nut which David found in the cockpit of the car.
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