Hülkenberg: “I was caught off guard in the last few laps”

It’s a mixed result for Haas this weekend. For several races, the American team has shown convincing performances, as evidenced by the Italian Grand Prix with the tenth place obtained by Kevin Magnussen. In Azerbaijan, Haas had the ambition to achieve a similar performance, as the car has often performed well on circuits favoring top speed. A desire that was fulfilled, but could have been even better, especially if Nico Hülkenberg had managed the end of the race better.

Some very costly last laps for Hülkenberg

Despite a disappointing qualification, finishing in fourteenth place, three positions behind his young British teammate Ollie Bearman, who replaced Magnussen this weekend, suspended for reaching the 12 penalty points on his SuperLicense, the former Renault driver had turned things around during the race. He overtook his teammate and firmly established himself in the top 10 for the majority of the race. However, the final laps were fatal for the German driver.

As he seemed about to secure the tenth place with more than a 5-second lead over his pursuer Franco Colapinto, the former Sauber driver completely cracked, probably due to his hard tires that he had since the 16th lap, and was overtaken by the Argentine on the 49th lap. However, in front of them, Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez collided, which allowed all drivers, including Hülkenberg, to gain two positions. Due to the incident, a yellow flag was waved before the virtual safety car intervened.

During the period of time before the intervention of the VSC, the Haas driver was successively overtaken by Hamilton and his teammate Bearman, causing him to drop to eleventh position. At the Grand Prix finish, the German driver explained that he had misjudged the situation, slowing down much more than his rivals, thinking that the FIA would deploy a Safety Car. « Everything was going rather well, » he declared to the official F1 channel. « But then, unfortunately, in the last two laps, I encountered some problems. With the accident at the end, I was taken by surprise, because for me, it was directly a Safety Car or even a red flag, as it was really a mess in the straight. But then, there was a green flag, and I just lost positions at that moment and unfortunately lost the result. »

Finally, apart from the points, the German does not seem to have truly understood the FIA’s decision not to intervene more radically, and revealed to have suffered damage after picking up debris from the contact between the Spaniard and the Mexican. “The whole track was covered, and I ran over a big piece – there were a lot of debris and big pieces, and I hit something very big,” he said. “I couldn’t see because I had a car right in front of me. I hit something and I didn’t know where my front wing was, to be honest. It was a big impact. Two last pretty crazy laps, but not in our favor.”

Haas finally leaves Azerbaijan with the same result as in Monza, but the American team will undoubtedly regret letting valuable points slip away, especially as they are increasingly threatened by Williams, who scored ten points this weekend. Haas will have to maximize its results until the end of the season if they still want to aim for a top 6 spot among the constructors.