Nico Hulkenberg conceded that Sauber\u2019s strong show of pace at the United States Grand Prix was \u201cunexpected\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hulkenberg<\/a> was the surprise story in Sprint Qualifying, as he positioned his Sauber in fourth place. But he was unable to translate this into points, after a collision with Oscar Piastri<\/a> at Turn 1.<\/p>\n While Qualifying for the Grand Prix yielded a more familiar result, the German climbed to eighth place on Sunday, returning the shine to his weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a tough day on Saturday, kind of a low blow with that Turn 1 incident,\u201d said Hulkenberg. \u201cThat was disappointing. So we were determined to bounce back in the race.\u201d<\/p>\n Reflecting on two places gained through contact between Carlos Sainz<\/a> and Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, he added: \u201cObviously, we had a bit of help from Carlos to get a little bit more than 10th, but we had good race pace.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it was a clean race, clean execution, so I\u2019m happy after all.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked how much personal encouragement he takes from an overall strong weekend, he said: \u201cI think it\u2019s always case-by-case, weekend-by-weekend case.<\/p>\n “It was a little bit unexpected to be so competitive here, so, to be honest, I\u2019m not quite sure what to expect in Mexico. It\u2019s a very different track, very different challenges there, so I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to make any predictions. I\u2019ll just let myself surprise myself with how it feels on Friday when we roll out.\u201d<\/p>\n In the sister Sauber, Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> finished in 18th place after early contact with Alex Albon<\/a> at the first corner on Lap 1.<\/p>\n \u201cI was fighting with the car ahead and he touched my rear axle and he spun, so I don\u2019t really know what happened there,\u201d said the Brazilian.<\/p>\n \u201cThe race was quite boring,” he added: \u201cWhen you are starting at the back, it\u2019s difficult to make your way up, especially when you are a bit stuck behind other cars and it\u2019s quite difficult to overtake. There\u2019s a lot of high speed sections here, and when you get to the straight line, you\u2019ve already cooked your tyres.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless you have a very big advantage \u2013 that I didn\u2019t have today \u2013 it\u2019s quite difficult to overtake.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nico Hulkenberg conceded that Sauber\u2019s strong show of pace at the United States Grand Prix was \u201cunexpected\u201d. Hulkenberg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-215323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}