08 Jul 2012

Sahara Force India was unable to convert its pace into points this afternoon as Nico Hülkenberg finished twelfth in the British Grand Prix. Paul Di Resta was out of luck as he retired after picking up damage on the opening lap of the race. 

P12      Nico Hülkenberg (VJM05/03)
Tyre strategy: New hard, new hard, new soft

Nico: “It was a tough race today, especially because my car was set up to favour wet conditions. That helped us yesterday, but hurt my top speed this afternoon. There were always cars around me in the race, especially in the final few laps when I had to defend from Bruno and Jenson, and I could not afford to make any mistakes. Unfortunately I locked up the rears going into turn three with two laps to go and that gave Bruno the chance to get ahead of me in the DRS zone. It’s frustrating to lose points so close to the finish but my tyres were running out of performance and the car was not easy to drive in the final stint.” 

DNF      Paul Di Resta (VJM05/02)
Tyre strategy: New soft

Paul: “I’m not really sure what happened. I just turned into turn four and there was no pressure in the right rear tyre so it was clearly punctured and coming off the rim. All I could do was bring the car back to the pits, but there was quite a lot of damage to the floor. I took some fresh tyres and went back out, but I was missing a lot of downforce and I went off the track at Becketts. So the team made the call to retire the car. I’m very disappointed because we took a gamble yesterday by running a dry set-up and the conditions today would have been ideal for us. On a positive note I want to say a big ‘thank you’ to the fans who have put up with the weather and shown amazing support all week.” 

Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director
“We should have scored points today so we leave our local race feeling disappointed. Nico drove a strong race and looked set for ninth, but we lost out to Senna with a couple of laps to go. Unfortunately in his eagerness to regain the spot Nico ran wide at Copse corner and dropped out of the points, which is frustrating. I’m also disappointed for Paul who retired after just a couple of laps. His car would have been well suited to the dry conditions today and we never got a chance to see what he could do in front of his home crowd. It’s still unclear what caused the puncture, but we suspect contact in the first couple of corners.”

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