Force India leave Budapest without any points to show for their efforts after Nico Hulkenberg finished the Hungarian Grand Prix in eleventh place and team-mate Paul di Resta was twelfth.
“A very difficult race, to be honest,” was Hulkenberg’s evaluation of his day at the Hungaroring. “I struggled a lot with the balance this afternoon and we just didn't have good enough pace.
“The rear tyre degradation was also high and it wasn't easy towards the end of the race. So with all things considered I think P11 was the maximum that was possible because we didn't make any mistakes and the two-stop strategy was definitely the right decision. We were not far away from the points, but we still need to go away and analyse what happened so that we can improve in time for the next race.”
Di Resta thinks he could have done better today, but blames a poor start and little chance of overtaking for his failure to pick up any points.
“I don't think P12 is a fair reflection of the speed we had in the car today,” said the Scot. “My race was compromised by a poor start and I lost a few positions going into turn one. I had the same issue in Germany last week so we need to understand how we can improve that going forward because it's hurting our track position.
“The first few laps were quite tough but the car came alive after lap four and brought me back into contention. Unfortunately it was impossible to maximise the speed of the car because there was no chance to overtake and once the pit stops were complete it was just a case of bringing the car home.”
Team principal Vijay Mallya was able to take some positives from this weekend, but knows thatForce India have work to do over the summer break.
“We've shown flashes of speed this weekend, but ultimately we haven't been consistent enough to achieve our goal of finishing in the points,” was his analysis. “We didn't qualify well enough and that hurt us this afternoon because there was little chance to progress on a track where overtaking is so difficult.
“There was no room to improvise with the strategy and our two-stop approach was definitely the right call considering the cars that we were racing against. We will take the positives from the last few days and try to understand where we can find more performance so that we can come back stronger after the summer break.”
