In an interview with the media today, Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg has admitted that he is extremely happy to have scored points in the Singapore Grand Prix today.
Hulkenberg finished the race in ninth place behind his team mate Sergio Perez who finished the race in seventh place. This weekend has seen Force India struggling to extract pace and performance from the car, but their points scored today has seem them jump ahead of their rivals McLaren for fifth place in the Constructors Championship.
In his interview with the media today, Hulkenberg stated the following about his performance in the race today:-
‘It’s good to be in the points and from a team perspective, it’s been a successful day. This is always a difficult race, especially from a strategic point of view and maybe we could have achieved more today.’
As Hulkenberg says, it is a great team result and should be happy to have scored points today after a difficult drive for him. As he rightly says, it was a difficult race for him and for Force India and if things were different, maybe he could have achieved more. But for me, I think Hulkenberg put in a great performance today and was rewarded with some points for his effort.
Further on in his interview today, Hulkenberg believes they could have finished higher up in the running order if it wasn’t for his tyres running out of grip. Hulkenberg added the following:-
‘After the Safety Car, I had to a 30 lap stint on the soft tyres and like most of the cars ahead, I was running out of grip towards the end of the race. With hindsight, it would have been better to pit again for fresh tyres and we probably could have finished even higher up.
‘But it’s always a difficult decision with the team with the information we had at the time. The good news is that we got two cars in the points.’
It would seem that Hulkenberg was just like other drivers struggling for grip and he did amazingly well to not lose positions on the track today. Of course I would agree with Hulkenberg that if they could pit again, they could have taken advantage of their rivals who were struggling to find grip on their tyres.
But overall, Hulkenberg sums it up nicely for me. Even though it would have been better for him to pit, Hulkenberg is right that today has been a great result for the team and is happy for himself and his team mate to score some much needed points at Singapore this weekend.
We should also mention that Force India have now regained fifth place back in the Constructors Championship and it is even more sweeter that McLaren only picked up one point today. But Hulkenberg should be happy with his performance today and he did a great job to achieve the points at a difficult weekend for himself and the Force India team. He has showed once again that if he has the car underneath, he can and will deliver and showing just how talented he is in the process.
But Force India now lead McLaren in the Constructors once again, they need to ensure that they keep pushing and try to stay ahead of them in the remaining races? Question is; can Force India stay ahead of McLaren? You can count on Hulkenberg and the Force India team giving it their best shot without a shadow of a doubt.
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