Before the Formula 1 season, Haas feared that it would be in last place at the beginning of the year. However, because Nico Hülkenberg scored a point in tenth place in Saudi Arabia, the US team left Jeddah in sixth place in the World Cup after the second race of the season.
The German owes this point, as he himself admits to Sky, “in large part” to his teammate Kevin Magnussen, “who paved the way for me.” Because Hülkenberg only started the race from P15 after a defect in qualifying.
The decisive moment in the race for Hülkenberg came on lap seven when Lance Stroll threw his Aston Martin into the wall, causing a safety car. At this point, Magnussen was 11th, just one position behind the points, Hülkenberg was 13th.
Haas only brought in the Dane behind the safety car to switch from mediums to the hard tires, while Hülkenberg stayed out on the yellow tires. By the end of the safety car phase, the German, alongside whom only three other drivers did not change tires, was pushed up to P8.
However, because all the drivers behind him except Guanyu Zhou were already in the pits and were allowed to finish the race without another stop, it was clear that Hülkenberg needed a large gap to the rear in order not to be passed through at his own stop later.
Haas asked Magnussen to block
This is where his teammate came into play, who was 13th after the safety car phase and still had a chance of scoring points at that point. However, Magnussen received two ten-second penalties shortly afterwards.
First he gained an unfair advantage against Yuki Tsunoda off the racetrack, and shortly afterwards he collided with Alexander Albon. “After we got the penalty for Kevin, there was no longer any chance of getting Kevin into the points,” explains Ayao Komatsu on Sky.
The team boss added: “The only chance we had was to get Nico into the points. […] So if we could create a big enough gap, then Nico could finish tenth. That’s what we tried and that’s what we did.”
“It was a team effort,” cheers Komatsu. But first things first: On lap 20, Magnussen receives the instruction from his race engineer Mark Slade: “You have to set a pace of 35.5. Don’t try to catch up with Zhou.”
At this point, Magnussen is about six seconds behind Hülkenberg. The team’s goal is clear: the Dane should deliberately drive slowly in order to enable the German to make a pit stop later without losing position. This is also evident from further radio traffic.
Magnussen “really stuck his elbows out”
Shortly afterwards, Magnussen receives clear instructions: “You have to keep the cars behind you behind you.” And later more clearly: “I repeat: you must slow down and keep the cars behind you behind you.”
A little more than a minute later it finally becomes clear which game Haas is playing. “Nico is currently five seconds ahead of us. He needs 20 seconds,” Magnussen is asked. The Dane implements the tactics as desired and slows down the cars behind him in the following laps.
“I heard that he really stuck his elbows out for several laps,” Hülkenberg revealed after the race and laughed: “Alex Albon just said that he fought for me as if it were [mein] brother is, and [er] Was wondering why he was sticking his neck out for his teammate!”
On lap 33, race engineer Slade radioed Magnussen: “We need 22 seconds to be sure.” At the end of this lap, Hülkenberg comes into the pits – and actually gets back onto the track right in front of his teammate.
“It was wider than a street,” smiles expert Ralf Schumacher on “Sky” after the race, referring to Magnussen and explains: “He did a great job. [Er] Of course, he did two things where he went completely over the mark.”
Hülkenberg promises: “I will repay the favor!”
An allusion to the two ten-second penalties, about which Schumacher says: “Sometimes Kevin Magnussen is someone who wants to force that with all his might. That’s a bit of his history too.” In this case, however, the team benefited.
Schumacher says that Magnussen helped Hülkenberg “a lot because the pace was difficult at times,” and the German himself also thanks his teammate for “really fighting for me and the team.”
“I will repay him the favor later in the year,” promises Hülkenberg. But would Haas have achieved a top 10 result even without the Magnussen blockade? Hülkenberg himself explains that “the pace was okay for all the midfield teams.”
“I think we are more or less on the same level as them,” he emphasizes. “It’s really very, very close by one or two tenths. But if you look ahead, I have 30 seconds on the next car, which is of course a huge gap – and that in a very, very clean race me,” he also clarifies.
In fact, Lewis Hamilton was in P9 at the finish, 29.6 seconds ahead of the Haas with starting number 27. That’s exactly the reason why they took a risk behind the safety car and didn’t come into the pits, explains Hülkenberg.
Hülkenberg doesn’t want to overstate the point
“If [die fünf Topteams] If you stay in the race, then the top 10 is taken,” he emphasizes. Therefore, you have to do something that is “unorthodox” in order to have any chance. “So there is still a lot of work ahead of us,” said Hülkenberg, who above all does not want to overestimate the points gained.
“Last year Kevin was also tenth here, if I’m not mistaken. I was able to score points in Melbourne and then the season turned completely around,” he remembers. Therefore, you have to wait for “a few” races before you can say for sure where you really stand.
“I wouldn’t want to get excited too early and I’m not jumping around now. I think we have to wait another three or four weekends to really confirm this, this trend that feels positive,” said Hülkenberg.
Ayao Komatsu is definitely happy about his first point as team boss and explains: “I said it before the race in Bahrain: Our fight is for P10. […] So this is like a victory for us. We got the maximum out of it. A great performance by the team.”
“Kevin’s penalty was a shame, but apart from that we managed everything. We split the strategy behind the safety car. Everything worked, I’m so happy for the team,” said the Japanese.
Hülkenberg explains defect in qualifying
Finally, the question remains why Hülkenberg wasn’t able to set a lap time in qualifying in Q2 on Friday? Officially there was only talk of a problem with the fuel system. Now Hülkenberg himself provides an explanation of what exactly was going on.
“It’s a strange story,” he smiles and reveals that the machine pumped out fuel instead of filling it before his run. “A digital logbook is kept and it went well 2,000 times and on the 2,001st time it defueled instead of refueling,” he shrugs.
We don’t know why exactly that happened. But in retrospect, the poor starting position in the race was perhaps even an advantage. If the starting point had been different, the strategy that ultimately brought Haas a point would have looked completely different.