The tide didn’t turn in Nico Hülkenberg’s favour at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as he fell short of yet another points-scoring finish. After being outqualified by his super sub teammate Bearman, the German driver started the race from twelfth on the grid, following Gasly’s disqualification and Hamilton’s pit lane start.
While his decent pace on both the medium and hard compounds allowed him to run in the points in the latter stages of the race, two specific errors resulted in him taking the chequered flag in eleventh place.
After touching the wall at the entry to turn 15 on lap 48, a mistaken sensation of sustaining a puncture and confusion regarding engine mode (having switched to prepare for a pit stop) enabled Colapinto to pull off a pass on Hülkenberg for P10.
Lap 48/49
Nico Hülkenberg: “Puncture. I think I hit the wall, front right puncture.”
Gary Gannon: “Copy Nico. [Front right tyre] pressure is okay for now.”
NH: “I think it’s done. It’s done. What to do?”
GG: “I still have tyre pressure. Tyre pressure is okay.”
NH: “F***!”
GG: “And mode push. The tyres are okay.”
NH: “I am mode push.”
GG: “In button off. Press in button. You’ve gotta click. Unclick it.”
NH: “It’s not working.”
In addition, a delayed reaction to the green flag signal after the double yellow in the wake of the collision between Sainz and Pérez allowed both Hamilton and Bearman to slip past the Haas driver.
It dropped him to P11, outside the points.
Lap 50
GG: “Yellow, turn 2. Double yellow between 2 and 3. Sainz crashed. Stay to the right.“
[Green light flashes]
NH: “S***, I hit something big. That’s gotta be a red flag.”
A bit later in the lap:
NH: “I hit something big with the front wing.”
GG: “Okay, we’re checking.”
[VSC deployed]
NH: “Man, how have they not like [thrown it earlier]?”
GG: “Yeah, it’s rubbish.”
When asked to address the circumstances that led him to finish outside the points post-race, a flustered Hülkenberg responded that he needed to look at the replays and process the last couple of laps.
Given the severity of the crash and substantial amount of debris across the track, the 37-year-old admitted that he was confounded by the flashing green light displayed after the double yellow. Additionally, he attributed his loss of positions at the end to this chaos.
“Yeah, it just went completely the wrong way. I kind of lost the position. A few things happened. I don’t want to go into detail now. I need to process it and look in the replays and who knows exactly what the team go through.
“Obviously the incident also, I mean massive crash, massive warzone, debris everywhere. I was surprised, it was double yellow and then it was back to green which confused me and I got caught off guard there and lost positions. So yeah, quite very surreal, last two laps. Unfortunately we came out on the wrong side of it.”
In terms of whether he collected any debris from the site of the incident, Hülkenberg confirmed that he ran into a sizeable piece of wreckage and that it impacted the front of his car in the process.
“Yeah, I hit something quite big and substantial. I wasn’t sure where my front wing was. I had a quite big hit on the front. Yeah, very confusing.”
With regard to the question of whether the race director should’ve red-flagged the race or deployed a safety car immediately, Hülkenberg confessed that he was anticipating the same. Taking into account the risk of crashing into stationary cars and debris at high speed, he remarked that he found the delay in neutralising the race somewhat strange.
“Yeah, to be honest that was my initial [reaction] when I went by. I was like, wow, how can we still race when there are two cars in a high-speed area with so much debris everywhere. I’m surprised that usually they are very fast, you know, Niels [Wittich], with that reaction. But today it was more, it was kind of the opposite, so a bit unusual.”
On the topic of tyre degradation and whether that caught him out at the end as well, Hülkenberg claimed that his tyre wear wasn’t worse by any means than that of others on track.
“No, I think it was ok. I mean everyone had a bit of tyre wear at the end but that was it.”
Moreover, the German acknowledged that it might’ve been a switch change he performed on the steering wheel that prompted the shift in engine mode after his encounter with the wall on lap 48.
“Yeah, there was multiple stuff going on, multiple things. It got pretty hectic and yeah, wrong way.”
