Force India narrowly miss out on points
Sahara Force India just missed out on points in Budapest as Nico Hulkenberg brought his VJM05 home in P11, a place ahead of teammate Paul Di Resta in P12. For Hulkenberg this was simply due to a lack of pace while Di Resta rued car problems that happened as well at the German GP.
Nico Hulkenberg, 11th, VJM05/03:
Tyre strategy: Used soft, new medium, new medium
“A very difficult race, to be honest. I struggled a lot with the balance this afternoon and we just didn’t have good enough pace. The rear tyre degradation was also high and it wasn’t easy towards the end of the race. So with all things considered I think P11 was the maximum that was possible because we didn’t make any mistakes and the two-stop strategy was definitely the right decision. We were not far away from the points, but we still need to go away and analyse what happened so that we can improve in time for the next race.”
Paul Di Resta, 12th, VJM05/02:
Tyre strategy: New soft, new medium, new medium
“I don’t think P12 is a fair reflection of the speed we had in the car today. My race was compromised by a poor start and I lost a few positions going into turn one. I had the same issue in Germany last week so we need to understand how we can improve that going forward because it’s hurting our track position. The first few laps were quite tough but the car came alive after lap four and brought me back into contention. Unfortunately it was impossible to maximise the speed of the car because there was no chance to overtake and once the pit stops were complete it was just a case of bringing the car home.”
Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director:
“We’ve shown flashes of speed this weekend, but ultimately we haven’t been consistent enough to achieve our goal of finishing in the points. We didn’t qualify well enough and that hurt us this afternoon because there was little chance to progress on a track where overtaking is so difficult. There was no room to improvise with the strategy and our two-stop approach was definitely the right call considering the cars that we were racing against. We will take the positives from the last few days and try to understand where we can find more performance so that we can come back stronger after the summer break.”
