Nico Hulkenberg left frustrated by three first lap crashes in 2016
Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg says his run of first lap collisions in 2016 has been “painful and frustrating.”
The German was eliminated on the first lap in two of the last four races in Singapore and the USA, and also retired early in Sochi. Austin was especially frustrating as he’d enjoyed a good qualifying session before the first corner incident with Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas.
“It’s just painful,” he said. “The whole weekend goes well, you’re under control, and then one moment goes wrong, and you lose the whole thing. It’s painful and frustrating, and it’s the third time it happened this year, first lap first corner more or less. It’s just the worst kind of feeling you can have, you don’t even feel you have participated in the race.
“It’s much better to do a race, and you do a mistake and the race is [expletive], but at least you can understand or work on it, analyze it. This you’re left with nothing, and it’s just frustrating. Unfortunately, it’s just the way it is, so I had to write it off, and go again this weekend.”
Hulkenberg has looked into all three first lap incidents and decided that he was not at fault in any of them.
“Of course you have to look at it and ask yourself, ‘was it me, what happened?’ But I think all three incidents were not really done to myself. The first one was in Sochi, where Esteban ran into the back of me, then obviously Singapore where again it was an unfortunate racing situation, and now with Seb. It’s one of those things.
“Everybody is fighting for every inch into the first corner, you’re on the brakes late, it’s not that we have margin - ‘OK, I go a bit harder on the brake and I pull out.’ It doesn’t work quite like that. If I could have avoided it, I would have. But it’s not possible.”
