Austin: Sahara Force India scored four points in Sunday's United States Grand Prix with Sergio Perez recovering to eighth place after contact on lap one dropped him to P17. Nico Hulkenberg’s race ended after contact at turn one, breaking the car’s steering arm.
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton narrowed his championship points deficit to Nico Rosberg as he cruised to a comfortable victory in the United States Grand Prix. Hamilton's win puts him 26 points behind his Mercedes team-mate with 75 available in the remaining three races.
Rosberg finished second after recovering a position lost to Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo at the start.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who finished third, said, “In the beginning of the race the supersoft tyres helped me but the actual start I felt wasn’t really that much better than the Mercedes. Then I saw Nico going to the outside so it gave me an opportunity on the inside. Obviously I would have loved to have lead out of Turn 1 but second was good enough. I tried to stay with Lewis the first couple of laps but then his soft tyres were able to go a bit better. I think we were looking good for P2 but then the Virtual Safety Car didn’t work in our favour today.”
“I’m not going to be too disappointed, it’s just cool to be on the podium here. I love coming here, the anthem was pretty awesome before the race, I had goosebumps, I’m not gonna lie, and then the podium after was great. It’s another big bag of points and we at least had Nico’s pace so that’s encouraging and we’ll try and do what we can in the next few days. Obviously Max and Kimi had their misfortunes today so it was just me and Seb out there, but we still gained a little bit on Ferrari so we’re looking good. We’ll try and keep going like this and get on the podiums for the last few races,” he added.
Speaking after the race, Sergio Perez said, “Eighth place was a good recovery after our race was compromised on lap one. I was hit hard from the rear under braking for turn 11 by Kvyat, who made a mistake and came in with no control. All of a sudden I was effectively in last place and with a badly damaged car. It was a difficult recovery, but step by step we got back into the points and in the end we didn’t get a bad result. We got all the strategy calls right and this helped us overcome the damage to the car because we made up positions in both pit stops.”
“To come away with four points and to move up to seventh in the drivers’ championship is a good result in these circumstances. It’s important to hold on when you get a difficult weekend, especially in races with high attrition, and score every point you can get, but the regret remains because I think we could have finished fifth today,” he said.
