Brazil GP: Nico Hülkenberg gave his all for Sahara Force India
Sahara Force India has been lagging in performance for a few races now. As a result, Nico Hülkenberg could do no better than 12th while Sergio Pérez deliberately sacrificed his qualifying to focus on the race. The Mexican driver will start last.
Nico Hülkenberg didn’t see much he could have improved during his qualifying since he was in line with the performances he has recorded since the beginning of the weekend: « It has been an uneventful day. In fact, the entire weekend has been smooth on my side of the garage. We simply haven’t been as competitive as we would have liked. For various reasons, the car is not completely in harmony with this track. It has been somewhat difficult to find the right rhythm and be consistent. From this perspective, 12th place is probably the best we could do today. »
However, the young German has not given up all hope of adding some points to his total at the end of tomorrow’s race.
On the other hand, the weekend was much more complicated for Sergio Perez. Indeed, the Mexican driver was only able to take the wheel of his car yesterday during FP3 since it had been damaged during the first practice session by Daniel Juncadella’s accident. This lack of running was compounded by the penalty he received following his collision with Adrian Sutil at the Austin Grand Prix. In these conditions, the team decided to completely abandon any hope of performing well in qualifying and focus on preparations for the race.
This hasn’t been an easy weekend for us. We knew we would struggle today due to the lack of running on Friday. Our focus was always on the race, and I think we made a lot of progress in the last session by concentrating on long runs rather than qualifying preparation. The race at Interlagos is always unpredictable. So, I believe we can achieve a good result tomorrow in the race and come away with some points.
