No miracle for Sahara Force India in China
The start of the 2015 season is clearly not reflective of what the team was able to show last year. Thus, Nico Hülkenberg did not manage to get out of Q1 and will start 16th, right next to his teammate, Sergio Perez.
While the team has already announced that the major evolution of their car will only arrive in Austria, the drivers must try to do their best to extract the potential of their car. But with constant attacking, it can lead to mistakes, as happened to Nico Hülkenberg. The German driver ended his session after the first round: « It’s disappointing not to make it out of Q1 today. Unfortunately, the last lap wasn’t fast enough. I lost a bit of time with a small mistake while pushing hard to get the maximum out of the car. That prevented us from progressing. »
He therefore knows that the road will be long before the performances improve: « We know that we have a lot of work ahead of us to develop the car and achieve the level of performance we expect. But we also know that it takes time: we just have to keep pushing to improve every week. »
As for his teammate Sergio Perez, he was unable to fully take advantage of reaching Q2 since the team chose to focus directly on the race. He hopes that saving a set of tires will pay off tomorrow: « I think we got the most out of the car in the first session. That’s why we approached Q2 with the race in mind because having enough fresh sets of tires will make a big difference on Sunday. I’m looking forward to the race and seeing what we can do. We need to analyze the different strategy options tonight and make sure we choose the right one. »
If both drivers claim to aim for points, the competition will be very tough and the drivers are not the favorites to achieve it.
