30 Oct 2012

Nico Hülkenberg’s eighth place in India extended Sahara Force India’s run of points finishes to six, and significantly it was a result achieved on pure merit.

Although qualifying had been disappointing for the team, Nico did a great job to pass four strong rivals – including two 2012 race winners – as he moved up the order. Given that the cars ahead were two Red Bulls, two Ferraris, two McLarens and the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen, it was a strong performance.

“It was as good as it could be really,” said Nico after the race. “On Saturday P12 was the maximum, today it was P8, so I should be happy with that. There was no more on the table – that was really as much as we could have achieved.”

This year Nico has had a habit of moving up well on the first lap, something he achieved notably at Spa and Suzuka, where he avoided accidents ahead. In India there were no spinning cars, but he did a great job to pass Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado and Nico Rosberg to move up to ninth, just behind Sergio Perez.

That superb first lap gave him track position and with fresher tyres he kept the pressure on Perez in the early laps. Then on lap 13 he moved past the Mexican driver to claim eighth.

“Obviously it was a DRS pass, and with DRS there’s only so much you have to work for it – the DRS does most of the job. I just had to prepare it and get a good exit from Turn 3, and the DRS obviously helped me to get past.”

After Perez pitted Nico found himself running on his own, well clear of Rosberg but too far behind Kimi Raikkonen ahead to be able to challenge. He then made his single pit stop of the race, for the harder tyre, on lap 28.

“The team did a good job. It was a good pit stop, although it was a bit difficult pulling into the garage because there was a cameraman in the way, and it turned out to be quite difficult for my guys. But they still managed to do a good pit stop, so credit to them.”

After the initial round of pit stops Nico ran ninth for a while, because Grosjean had started on the harder tyre and went for a very late stop. When the Lotus driver came in on lap 36 Nico duly moved back into eighth place.

With his younger and softer tyres Grosjean closed in on Nico towards the end of the race, but the German stayed safely in front to claim four valuable points.

“It was a difficult end to the race, with Grosjean pushing on again. The first three-quarters of the race was a bit quiet, I was on my own. Overall a strong car performance, a strong team performance, and we should be happy with what we achieved.”

 

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