19 Oct 2012

Nico Hülkenberg followed up his seventh place in Japan by going one better in Korea, finishing a strong sixth as Sahara Force India continued to pile up the points.

Nico is now 12^th in the World Championship, having moved ahead of both team mate Paul Di Resta and Michael Schumacher.

“It was a perfect weekend,” says Nico. “At the beginning of the weekend I said that’s what we needed, and that’s what we had, no mistakes and everything went smooth and well. That was reflected in the qualifying performance and again in the race.”

For the 10^th race in succession at least one Force India made it to Q3, and Nico did a good job to outpace Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher to claim eighth. Crucially at the start he managed to get ahead of Romain Grosjean to gain seventh place, although it was a bit fraught.

“I got him through turn one. He was on the outside line and I was in the inside. The start itself was average I would say, I didn’t gain much. Jenson came very close to me, almost got me on the inside, but I managed to fight him off. I had a bit of clean air, so I was able to brake a bit cleaner and deeper, and made some ground back like that.”

Nico was helped when the turn 3 incident involving Rosberg, Button and Kamui Kobayashi eliminated three potential rivals. It had another impact as well, because Rosberg’s parked car ensured there were yellow flags out in the DRS zone for several laps, which helped to protect Nico from Grosjean.

“It was good for me, I had more pressure from the back than I could put on Kimi up ahead, I think. The lead group from the off was a bit too strong, I couldn’t follow them initially. It was actually quite good timing and lucky for me that Romain couldn’t overtake there.”

Nico continued to run seventh through the first stint and when both he and Grosjean pitted together on lap 13, he just managed to get out still ahead, although it was close!

However, at the second stops Grosjean pitted a lap earlier, on lap 31, and when Nico stopped next time around the Frenchman managed to get ahead. All was not lost however. When the battling pair caught Lewis Hamilton – who had a suspension problem – Nico managed to sweep past both of them and jump from eighth to sixth in one spectacular move.

“I think Lewis struggled on his tyres, he was a bit slow,” Nico explains. “Romain had DRS from him and I had DRS from Romain, and that bunched us all up between turns two and three. I think the two of them had used all their KERS on the straight, and I still had a good margin left from turns three to four, and I was able to use it to get close to them, and then I got a nice tow.

“I saw them both going for the inside, so I chose the outside, in clean air, with the normal braking point. Suddenly I was next to Lewis, and I was a bit surprised myself. Once I was there I thought I might as well try to get them both in one time. He tried to make it hard, opened the steering a bit, but it was still fair. But I hung in there as well and came out in front of both after Turn 6, which was obviously quite nice.”

Having grabbed sixth place Nico successfully held on to it for the remainder of the race, eventually pulling safely clear of Grosjean.

“The team is doing a good job, I feel more comfortable in the car, and we’ve just got a nice rhythm and momentum. It’s so important, as we all know in F1. It’s just running well. Two race weekends ago in Singapore I had more of a rough weekend, and since then it’s got going a bit again. We just need to make sure that we have four more weekends like this one.

“We need to fight and stretch ourselves to achieve that every single time now, but it is possible.”

Next stop is of course India: “It’s a home Grand Prix obviously for us, first time for me on that circuit as well – it’s a new circuit to me, so it will be interesting as well. It’s a big and important weekend for us.”

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