The Sahara Force India team is still hampered by their accident
The lost track time during yesterday's second practice session was missed when it came time to find the last tenths in qualifying. As a result, Nico Hülkenberg fell short of Q3, finishing in 11th place, and Sergio Perez will start 13th.
Sergio Perez experienced a major accident yesterday morning when his rear suspension broke, sending him into a rollover. As a precaution, the team decided not to run Nico Hülkenberg during the second session in order to investigate the reasons for the Mexican’s accident. This resulted in the team losing a lot of track time, and at the time of qualifying, the settings were not optimized.
This may be what made the difference in Q2 to allow Nico Hülkenberg to step up and move into Q3, especially since he was hampered by the red flag caused by Fernando Alonso: « This has been a difficult weekend for the team but I must commend the way they handled the situation. The main penalty yesterday was losing track time and maybe with more adjustments, we could have made it to Q3 today. The other key factor in qualifying was the red flag, which handicapped me because I was on my first fast lap. So I only had one fast lap to go and I missed it by two hundredths of a second. »
For Sergio Perez, the sensations were not at all the same as the day before since his car no longer has the upgrades specially brought for this weekend: « I was very optimistic on Friday before the accident. What happened handicapped us a lot. We lost new upgrades that we had brought for the race. They worked very well and made a big difference. When we returned to the track this morning, I was not satisfied with the aerodynamic balance of the car, which had become quite unpredictable. »
Nevertheless, Otmar Szafnauer, the team’s operations manager, wanted to remain optimistic and particularly highlight the quick execution by his mechanics: « I think we can be satisfied with the 11th and 13th places, especially after Friday’s events and the lack of mileage. Everyone in the team did a fantastic job over the past 24 hours to understand and resolve the suspension issues we faced yesterday. Similarly, it took a lot of effort to rebuild Sergio’s car. As always, they did a very good job, without breaking the curfew. »
The team is relying on its race pace to climb back into the points, in order to consolidate the valuable fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
