Explaining Nico Hulkenberg's Anonymous 2014 Italian Grand Prix Performance
After gaining a total of 69 points from the opening 10 races of the 2014 Formula One season, Nico Hulkenberg has scored just one in the last three grands prix.
Until the Hungarian Grand Prix at the end of July, the German could only be matched by Fernando Alonso, the 2005 and 2006 world champion, for consistency, scoring at least one point in every single event.
But since he committed the cardinal sin of hitting his teammate, Sergio Perez, in damp conditions at the Hungaroring—which led to Hulkenberg's first retirement in 23 races—things have never quite been the same for the Force India driver.
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The 27-year-old followed up his Hungary crash with his worst qualifying performance of the season, which saw him eliminated from Q1 after, as he explained to the team's official website, he opted to participate in the session on a single set of intermediate tyres.
The German's recovery to 10th the following day was only made possible after McLaren's Kevin Magnussen, as per the official Formula One website, was relegated from sixth to 12th due to a 20-second time penalty.
Despite Hulkenberg's trials and tribulations in recent events, his performance—or lack of it—in last weekend's Italian Grand Prix was his most concerning blip yet.
The Autodromo di Monza, a venue synonymous with the scarlet red of Ferrari, was painted silver this year, with no less than seven Mercedes-powered cars finishing the race inside the top 10.
The Silver Arrows' dominant power unit came into its own at the home of the Prancing Horse, zooming its way along those long, inviting straights which characterise the high-speed Monza circuit.
Yet Hulkenberg was the odd one out in a group containing the three podium finishers—Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Felipe Massa—as well as Valtteri Bottas, Perez, Jenson Button and Magnussen.
The No. 27 car, having started outside of the top 10 for the fifth time in 2014, finished a distant 12th, 72.6 seconds behind Hamilton, the race winner, and 6.5 seconds adrift of Magnussen—who suffered his second time penalty in as many races—according to the official F1 website.
Force India have been the masters of the alternative strategy this season, with Perez benefiting most memorably in the Canadian Grand Prix, in which he briefly challenged for victory, and the Austrian Grand Prix, where he recovered from 15th on the grid to finish sixth.
The decision to start Hulkenberg on prime tyres at Monza, however—when all the cars ahead of the German began the race on mediums—was ill-judged.
The Italian Grand Prix, which saw Pirelli, F1's sole tyre supplier, bring their most conservative types of rubber—selections which led to Force India struggling in Spain and Britain earlier this season—was always bound to be a one-stop race, leaving teams with less strategic flexibility than at other grands prix.
Hulkenberg, to his credit, briefly masked the effects of the slower compound with a strong start, climbing to ninth by the opening corner after hugging the inside of the first chicane.
As the race began to settle down into a rhythm, however, his lack of pace soon became apparent as Kimi Raikkonen, Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo breezed past in quick succession between the fifth and seventh laps.
And by the time the German made his one and only pit stop on Lap 19, Ricciardo was, according to the FIA television feed, around six-and-a-half seconds up the road, with the Australian by that point, as per the FIA's race lap analysis, lapping around eight tenths quicker than the Force India.
Although Hulkenberg later told the team's official website that he made his pit stop prematurely in the hope of undercutting his competitors as well as the fact that he was falling further and further away from the pack ahead, the decision to bin the hard tyres so early only served to compromise the rest of his race.
To put the German's early stop into perspective, Daniil Kvyat, who also started on the stronger compound, circulated for 30 laps, as per Pirelli's race review, before making his only visit to the pits.
And Perez—in the same car as Hulkenberg, remember—pitted on the very same lap as the German to get rid of a set of used medium tyres, according to Force India's official website, before spending the remaining 34 laps of the grand prix on hards—an indication of just how much further Hulkenberg could have gone.
Hulkenberg's early stop, however, condemned him to spending 34 laps on options, which made the German spend the longest of any driver on the medium compound, according to Pirelli's race review.
Hulkenberg's quickest lap time over the course of the grand prix—which the FIA's fastest-lap data recorded on Lap 35, 16 laps into his stint—was the slowest of any Mercedes-powered driver.
And he failed to be placed any higher than 11th in either of Monza's three sectors, as per the governing body's best-sector information, although Hulkenberg's failure to benefit from either DRS or a tow—as he explained to ForceIndiaF1.com—is likely to have played a role in his underwhelming ranking.
The most damning aspect of Hulkenberg's weekend, however, came right at the end.
As Sky Sports' Ted Kravitz noted, Kvyat—who passed Hulkenberg for 11th place on the 46th of the race's 53 laps—suffered a brake problem as he approached the first chicane on the penultimate lap, and was left without braking for the remainder of the race on the fastest circuit on the calendar.
Despite the Russian driver's fundamental problem, Hulkenberg, whom Kravitz claimed was suffering from a damaged floor—which is likely to have contributed to the Force India being, as the German put it to the outfit's official website, "difficult to manage" and "tricky to drive"—could not catch the Toro Rosso.
Although, at the time of Kvyat's off-track excursion, Hulkenberg, as per the FIA television feed, was in the region of seven seconds behind the 20-year-old, the Force India driver could only close the gap to 1.5 seconds at the chequered flag, according to Formula1.com.
It was the final insult on a weekend of misery and, in a sport as fast-moving as Formula One, made Hulkenberg's career-best run of points finishes seem like a distant memory.
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