Hulkenberg Asserts Haas Needs To Do 'Something Unorthodox' To Score Points
F1Monday, 18 March 2024 at 21:00
Nico Hulkenberg, who scored a point for Haas during the second race of the season, suggested his team had to do something that didn't seem "like common sense."
Ayao Komatsu, who became the team principal of Haas only a couple of weeks before the pre-season testing, set low expectations concerning his team's performance this year.
The Japanese engineer stated that eighth place in the Championship would be an ambitious target for his team. However, after the second race of the season, Haas is sitting in sixth place.
The top five teams are currently quite a bit ahead in the race pace of the bottom five, which means it is incredibly challenging for the bottom five teams to score points.
When Lance Stroll crashed during the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, there was a chance to fight for one point for the tenth place, and Haas managed to snatch it with their controversial strategy.
Though Haas has only one point in total, at the moment, it is enough for sixth place in the Championship, as four out of ten teams are still without a point. Hulkenberg said:
"I think in races like this race [in Saudi] when, currently we have the top five teams, if they stay in the race, that's the top 10 taken."
The American team told Magnussen (with a 20-second penalty) in P13 to defend and back up all the cars behind him, allowing Hulkenberg to create a gap big enough for the German to stop for a change of tires.
That is precisely what happened, and Hulkenberg was then able to bring the one point home. Other teams, of course, didn't like Haas's strategy, but Hulkenberg suggests they had to come up with something "unorthodox" if they wanted to score.
"So, I always feel you have to do something unorthodox and something not so [logical] or what seems like common sense."
"You have to obviously push your luck a little bit and do something different, offset yourself and, like in the past, that has often paid off."
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