Double points haul in Germany draws Force India close to Williams in constructors' championship - MotorSportsTalk

Force India moved to within 15 points of fourth place in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship after a double-points finish in Sunday’s German Grand Prix.

Despite being hit with a one-place grid penalty on Saturday, Nico Hulkenberg spent much of his race inside the top 10 before passing Williams’ Valtteri Bottas for seventh place late on.

“Seventh was probably the best result available to us today, so it feels good to get the maximum from our race and score some important points,” Hulkenberg said after the race.

“The team did a great job with the strategy because we went into the race believing a two-stopper was possible, but then made an early decision to switch to three stops. It was definitely the right way to go and allowed me to take seventh place in the final few laps.

“So it’s a happy Nico and a happy team. We can look forward to the summer break and aim to carry this momentum forward in the second part of the season.”

After a poor start, teammate Sergio Perez battled his way into the top 10 late on, passing the ailing Fernando Alonso before finishing 10th to score a point.

“It’s safe to say today was the worst start in my whole career,” Perez said.

“I had a lot of wheelspin at the start and dropped back to P16 – so it was a long fight back through the pack.

“The team had to think on their feet and tweak the strategy to get me back into a competitive position. Degradation was quite high, especially when following other cars, and I spent a lot of time in the middle of the race fighting with Fernando.

“In the last few laps I was running out of tires, but I knew Fernando was in a similar situation, so when I saw an opportunity I knew I had to take it. I honestly didn’t think we would score points after turn one, but we did it.”

Bottas was Williams’ sole points’ scorer in P9 after Felipe Massa suffered early damage that eventually forced him to retire, allowing Force India to close up in the constructors’ championship. The gap between the two teams now stands at 15 points.

“With Valtteri, we tried a strategy which clearly didn’t work. We deployed the wrong tactics in the race, which is something we’ve got to learn from,” Williams head of performance engineering Rob Smedley said.

“As a group of people, we get it right most of the time, but today we didn’t. We thought the tires would go to the end but they didn’t and so ninth was the best we could achieve, unfortunately.

“It hasn’t been a great day but this is where we see the mettle of everyone moving forward and make sure we don’t let our heads go down.

“We’ll carry on improving and trying to do the absolute maximum that we can do with the car that we’ve got. We’ll keep pushing on.”

Formula 1 returns with the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28 at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

Double points haul in Germany draws Force India close to Williams in constructors’ championship

Hunter Lawrence defends Haiden Deegan after controversial block pass at Detroit

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