During qualifying, Sahara Force India chose to secure 9th and 10th positions, allowing them to choose their tire strategy. For both cars, it was then decided to attempt a one-stop strategy.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, this strategy was completely called into question by the red flag caused by the collision between Fernando Alonso and Esteban Gutierrez, as explained by Nico H\u00fclkenberg: \u00ab I think the red flag made things much more complicated for our one-stop strategy because it allowed everyone to change their tires. It was really a shame because it meant I wasn’t in the right position and I was stuck behind the Haas for the majority of the race.<\/i> \u00bb<\/p>\n
The German was not able to try everything to overtake the Frenchman because he himself was under threat from the cars behind him. He had to find a clever balance between attack and defense: \u00ab It wasn’t easy to get close to Romain and I had many cars behind me, which means I was under pressure and had to defend as well.<\/i> \u00bb<\/p>\n
In the end, he could be satisfied with scoring the valuable points for 7th place. His teammate, Sergio Perez, couldn’t say the same as he only finished in a modest 13th place. The Mexican’s race was compromised right from the start: “My problems started from the beginning: I lost a few places, and that put me in a very difficult position. I spent most of my first stint behind Alonso, who had a faster set of tires. Being stuck in dirty air destroyed my tires.”<\/p>\n
But things did not improve afterward since after Alonso, it was Jenson Button’s McLaren that thwarted his plans: \u00ab Unfortunately, there was a very similar situation after the restart because I was overtaken by Jenson, who had super softs, which again cost me a lot of time.<\/i> \u00bb<\/p>\n
With all the time spent behind competitors, the VJM09’s mechanics were put to the test and began to show signs of weakness towards the end of the race: At the end, I had an overheating issue with my tires, probably because I spent most of the race in traffic, but we still managed to finish the race.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nico H\u00fclkenberg kicked off his season with a strong 7th place. The German might have hoped for more if he hadn’t been stuck behind Romain Grosjean for a good part of the race. Sergio Perez did not score points, finishing in 13th place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":38819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[92,958,1309],"class_list":["post-12543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-bilan","tag-melbourne","tag-racing-point-f1-team"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n