Nico Hulkenberg gave the stewards some work this Saturday in Spielberg, with decisions that raised some eyebrows.
In the ending laps of the Sprint, around Turn 3, the German was attempting to overtake the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso, when he locked up and forced him out of track.
A mistake that cost him a 10-second time penalty and two penalty points for a move that Alonso himself defined optimistic and not worthy of such a punishment.
“I was super surprised when I heard that. I was a bit baffled. I went to see the stewards to ask for their reasoning, opinions about it. They feel it’s justified in their opinion,” commented Hulkenberg on Saturday afternoon.
“I have a different view and opinion. When everything is on the limit and you have to make a move. You have to take certain risks and go a bit out of the comfort zone, I locked up, I didn’t run him wide on purpose.”
“I was locking up both front axles. That’s what happens at the end of a tyre life when everything is really on the edge.”
“In 2019, there was a very similar scenario with Max and Charles in the last lap before the win, there was no consequence. I’ll leave it with them, hopefully, they’ll review it again.”
Having started the Sprint at the very back – in 9th row along with Valtteri Bottas – he was nonetheless “pleased to bounce back” on Saturday.
“This morning I was actually fairly happy with my sprint, but given where I started I didn’t expect to make much progress,” he explained.
“But how I managed to stay in heavy traffic and how the car behaved gave me some confidence going into quali this afternoon. Well executed, even through a good learning curve and progress through Q1 and Q2.”
“Especially Q2, run 2, that lap was obviously very important and meant we pushed through. Happy about that, feel like we maximized that today now.”
In the super tight qualifying for the actual Grand Prix on Sunday he managed to progress into Q3 and take P9 ahead of Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, just behind Sergio Perez’s Red Bull.
Not a matter of great changes from the set-up his Haas had in the Sprint Shootout on Friday, but details that made a huge difference in performance.
“A few details we changed, it’s just feeling, rhythm. Sometimes yesterday in a sprint quali you have one set only, first two laps, it’s like you start the session and it’s finished already.”
“If some details are not in the right place and you don’t have the perfect harmony and feeling like I did yesterday, then you’re just on the back foot. So yeah, it’s all in a small print and detail. Read the small print.”
Here in Austria where usually trips to the stewards are caused by endless track limits infringements, it was two incidents in the pit lane that had Hulkenberg summoned after the session.
“The problem is we’re at the end of the pit lane. It’s always tricky even if we go out early, it’s a blind spot. The cars that are there, it’s hard to judge and to understand who is where. But I feel we are really disadvantaged in that sense because you have to let everyone by,” he explained.
“And you go right at the back and you get in trouble with timing and with temps and everything. It’s tricky and we need to review that because if we pull forward way before someone that has joined the back of the queue, we should be allowed to go.
“Otherwise we just end up losing all the time, only because we’re at the end of the pit lane. I don’t think that’s fair and right, we’ll speak to them and make some suggestions and some changes hopefully.”
The event notes state that it’s all a matter of where the wheel is placed, if it over the white line the driver who is exiting will have priority over the ones already waiting to rejoin the track.
Particularly in the Q2 incident with Perez, Hulkenberg was exiting the garage and although his wheels where not on the white line he was standing still held by his mechanic in order to let Lando Norris by and then moving into the fast lane with his front left wheel.
Hulkenberg argues he could not let the nose of his Haas through “because I had another car there. But I was there and he came way later.”
“And then I think he complained that I was waiting there like 20 minutes. It’s common sense, isn’t it?”
Ultimately it ended with no further action for the incident with Perez and a team reprimand for the one in Q1.
