Nick Heidfeld under pressure
Eric Boullier, the head of LRGP, thinks that Nick Heidfeld must raise his level of performance in the upcoming Grand Prix events.
After a rollercoaster start to the season marked by some underwhelming performances (an anonymous race in Australia) and a podium in Malaysia, Nick Heidfeld is still struggling to convince his boss Eric Boullier.
The French boss acknowledges that his driver has not been “good enough” at the start of the season, particularly compared to his teammate Vitaly Petrov. We need to sit down with him and talk about all this to understand what is happening to him. He must be able to compete with Vitaly, especially in qualifying. If his car is not well-tuned and balanced, he will struggle to deliver strong performances in a lap.
The technical approach of the German driver is therefore being called into question, as it was mainly for this aspect of his talent that the team had hired him at the beginning of the season to replace Robert Kubica, who was injured during a rally in Italy.
Eric Boullier ups the ante on Heidfeld’s poor qualifying performances, hoping he will improve in upcoming races.
If I had to judge Nick’s start to the season, I would say he’s doing a very good job on Sunday, but the higher you qualify on the starting grid, the better your chances of scoring big points, explains Boullier.
The recent Monaco Grand Prix is the perfect example. « If you are first and third on the grid, there are no problems. If you find yourself in eleventh and sixteenth, it will be more complicated. »
The pressure is now on Nick Heidfeld’s shoulders, who will have to prove his quality in the upcoming races, especially since drivers like the Frenchman Romain Grosjean or the Brazilian Bruno Senna are at the doorstep of securing a spot at Lotus Renault GP, and rumors of an early return for Kubica continue to escalate.
