The German Grand Prix is very German, much as the British Grand Prix is very British. There are those who continue to bemoan the demise of the old Nürburgring, or the Nordschleife, but we really do have to move on.

It is true that the new Nürburgring is a pretty dull place, not a great circuit, not a lot of atmosphere, but it is to be found in a rather beautiful part of Germany. Lots of very dark green trees, misty valleys, slightly spooky forests and hilltops shrouded in cloud. I once dared to suggest, in print, that the new Nürburgring did not lend itself to great occasions and became embroiled in a lengthy correspondence with a bunch of fans who’d taken great exception to my comments.

Hockenheim, in my view, is a more atmospheric stage altogether and, despite the demise of those terrifying straights through the forest, there somehow remains an edginess about the place.

This is partly because of its history, but also partly because of the corners that are known as the stadium section which has one of those enormous and rather forbidding grandstands. The cars no longer hurtle headlong into the forest, now turning right after the first corner and thereby sidestepping the high-speed grey roads that took them out into the country and back again. In the rain this section made you shudder, the image being one of a noise-filled cloud of moving spray.

While almost everyone at Silverstone seemed to be wearing red McLaren caps, at Hockenheim the uniform will be the grey of Mercedes-Benz whose pointed star dominates the skyline. There will also be very visible support for Michael Schumacher, still many people’s hero despite the arrival of Sebastian Vettel at the top of the charts.

Wherever you go racing in Germany, Schumacher shirts, caps and banners are much in evidence. He is somehow more German than Vettel, more the kind of man you’d expect them to worship. And this, of course, will be a hugely important weekend for the Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix team, the company keen to reinforce its position in a market that is increasingly threatened by the might of Volkswagen and Audi, the VW Group relentlessly setting new records for worldwide sales. And Audi is uncomfortably good at winning major motor races.

It is somehow easy to forget that Merc has two German drivers. Nico Rosberg keeps a low profile, certainly as compared with Schumacher and Vettel, and has always been seen as a dark horse by the wider media. In the campsites of Hockenheim, where the aromas of beer and bratwurst fill the air, he will have his supporters, as will Hulkenberg, but I’d bet that the grandstands will be rooting for a Schumacher victory on Sunday.

I recently spent a fascinating few minutes talking to a couple of the engineers from the Mercedes team, asking them why it has become so difficult to set up an F1 car in 2012. They, like most of the other teams, had no definitive answers. Yes, the car might be quick on a Friday, or a Saturday, but then it doesn’t work on the Sunday. Tyres, it’s all about those tyres. So, at half-term in the season, nobody knows who will win at Hockenheim. There will be a huge crowd, a lot of cheering when the silver cars come through the stadium, but very little else is predictable.