Nico Hülkenberg’s seventh place on the grid gave Haas hope for a good result. The disappointment was all the greater that in the race on Sunday it was only enough for 15th place.
“We are competitive for one lap, but not for 66 laps,” summarized the German after the race on “Sky”. “At the end of the day, the pace isn’t enough.”
Haas’ problem in Barcelona was mainly the tires and the extremely high degradation. “Especially after the start, I was actually like windfall on the first laps. I don’t know what happened to me, I was just eaten up,” says Hulkenberg. “I immediately had heavy graining in the front and rear and just drove backwards.”
He went further back, place by place. The team had to react and got him for the first pit stop after just eight laps. But it didn’t get any better on medium or hard, so the racing team had to come three times to change tires with both drivers – as the only team. And that mortgage is too big for the drivers to get any more out of.
“The pace was okay compared to our main opponents, but we just had one stop more. You can’t catch up on that and we weren’t faster on fresh tires either,” says Hulkenberg.
A disappointed team boss Günther Steiner defends the tactic with the three stops: “If we hadn’t stopped, we would have been even slower and ended up there,” says the South Tyrolean.
Pushed too hard at the beginning?
At the beginning of his stint, Hülkenberg even drove the fastest race laps at times and therefore used the tires hard. Could that be the mistake? “It was on purpose,” he replies. “We’re at the bottom and we have to try something. We have to create an opportunity.”
“If I had saved five seconds at the start it would still have been the same result. We know that. But we’re not here to do a coffee ride. I pushed on purpose. I heard the tires scream but I had to do it anyway.”
But it didn’t help. In the end, Hülkenberg finished in 15th place, teammate Kevin Magnussen was a colorless 18th.
Now we have to find out why the car has such serious problems with tire degradation: “We have ideas, but I’d rather talk to the team about them,” says Magnussen. Hülkenberg, on the other hand, tries to answer: “I think it’s always a mix of reasons,” said the German.
“Of course it’s downforce, but it’s definitely a bit of suspension as well. Our car isn’t that easy to control and that usually hits the tires pretty hard.”
Qualifying always raises expectations
The fact that he showed in qualifying with eighth place that the Haas is good for at least one lap is positive for him, but that’s not really gratifying with regard to the race, as he says: “I would prefer it the other way around”, says Hulkenberg.
“While it’s nice to do a good qualifying lap, that always raises expectations and then on Sunday there’s a disappointment, which isn’t easy to deal with and isn’t always easy to explain to people. We’ve got a long term there still work ahead of us.”
The hope lies in the upcoming race in Canada, where Sky expert Ralf Schumacher sees better chances for Haas: “Canada is usually cooler, less grip. This means that tire wear is less and you have to use the curbs to gain temperature. Braking is good, the Haas has good straightline performance, so it’ll be good at that,” he says.
But: “He doesn’t stand a chance on routes like this, he fights with blunt weapons.”