Nico Hulkenberg endured a difficult Chinese Grand Prix finishing a lowly 15th for the second time this season.
The German started in 13th after he was handed a three-place grid penalty for his wheel coming loose in qualifying yesterday. Hulkenberg made an impressive start and also capitalised on the collision between the Ferrari drivers to end lap one in fifth place. With teammate Sergio Perez running one place ahead in fourth, but the Safety Car was deployed on the fourth lap and dented Hulkenberg’s race.
“It was a frustrating race in the end, even though the start and the first laps were great. As the lights went out, I rocketed from P13 up to fifth place, picking up one place after another. The safety car threw all this good work out the window because I had to stack in the pits behind Checo and dropped right down the order.”
Hulkenberg had slowed on the pit entry to minimalise the time lost stacking behind his teammate but Sebastian Vettel took advantage of the rules to overtake his compatriot. The stewards subsequently issued a five-second time penalty to the Force India driver for his unnecessary slow driving in the pit entry.
The penalty itself had little impact on Hulkenberg’s race as he explains: “the dirty air affected us, we had some faster cars coming through and this destroyed my tyres. In fact, tyre degradation was the main story of the day and we appeared to suffer more than some others, which is why I went backwards in the second half of the race. The time penalty was an added blow, but in the end, it didn’t make a huge difference to my result”.
Teammate Perez finished outside the points in 11th and the six points scored in Australia for Hulkenberg, puts the Force India team down in seventh place in the Constructor standings after three races.
