The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia proved to be a particularly eventful weekend for Audi, with the squad left to reflect on a \u201cfrustrating\u201d end to Sunday\u2019s race that saw them lose out on points during the last lap.<\/p>\n
After progressing to Q3 in Saturday\u2019s Qualifying, Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> lined up in P10 on the grid while team mate Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> started from P15 \u2013 but both looked set for a tough start to the race when they bolted on soft tyres, a decision that quickly went against them given the still damp conditions from the heavy rainfall that had delayed the event getting underway.<\/p>\n Following an early stop for the intermediates, the Audi<\/a>s were each able to make gains. However, Bortoleto\u2019s progress faltered when he made contact with the Williams<\/a> of Carlos Sainz<\/a>, an incident that the Brazilian subsequently received a 10-second time penalty for.<\/p>\n Hulkenberg, meanwhile, remained in the fight for points until the very end of the race and only just missed out after being overtaken by Racing Bulls<\/a>\u2019 Arvid Lindblad<\/a> on the final lap of the Grand Prix.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the team were handed a fine (part of which was suspended for 12 months on the condition that there is not a similar incident in that time) for an unsafe release of Hulkenberg during a pit stop.<\/p>\n While he had also seen a point slip away during the final stages of the race one week earlier in Azerbaijan, Hulkenberg was pragmatic about experiencing a similar fate at Sepang.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously a few times now I just missed out, but ultimately [it was] not quite good enough, our package here,\u201d the German explained. \u201cThat’s why we couldn’t hang on to that point in the end, but obviously if we’re honest we only got there because of some retirements and some trouble at the front.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like it was always a long shot, but I\u2019m much happier with my performance compared to yesterday, which wasn’t so difficult, but a clean race from my side. Yeah, good racing and a good afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the garage, Bortoleto took the blame for his collision with Sainz after what proved to be a tough afternoon in Malaysia.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst I want to apologise to Carlos,\u201d said Bortoleto. \u201cI ended up touching him there and maybe destroyed his race, a bit of mine as well, created damage in my car, and after that we were just too far behind to fight for anything.<\/p>\n \u201cI was racing on my own and unfortunately had another few issues through the race as well that was very difficult to manage, but anyway, I was already gone after my contact. So I apologise to him, to my team, to his team, and we move to Singapore.\u201c<\/p>\n The 21-year-old still felt that there were \u201ca lot of positives\u201d to take forward, adding: \u201cI think we delivered a good upgrade in Baku and it showed to be strong here. And yeah, heads up to Singapore. I’m excited for the weekend, and hopefully we can have a good one there.\u201d<\/p>\n Audi\u2019s Racing Director Allan McNish echoed that positivity, having praised the performance of the car in Malaysia whilst acknowledging that missing out on points was a frustrating end to the event.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got the pace of the car. That was quite clear when we got to Qualifying,\u201d McNish reflected after the race. \u201cI think we had got it into the right window, and Gabi delivered a really good Qualifying.<\/p>\n \u201cNico was on a similar pace till Turn 14. These things happen. And I think, we sort of got back through to roughly that point by the end of the race. Not quite that same point, but very close to it.<\/p>\n \u201cSo in terms of that, yeah, it was a bit frustrating to be overtaken in the last lap again, because that’s two races consecutively where we’ve been done in the last lap and that’s a little bit frustrating. But I think we know where our strengths and weaknesses are and we know we’re a bit exposed, and when the Safety Car came out we become a bit more exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia proved to be a particularly eventful weekend for Audi, with the squad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-918085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}