Sergio Perez, Nico Hulkenberg, Red Bull Ring, 2024

Hulkenberg ‘let Perez pass’ in unseen last-lap move – then re-passed him

Formula 1

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Nico Hulkenberg revealed he deliberately allowed Sergio Perez to overtake him on the final lap knowing he’d be able to repass him.

The Haas said he allowed the Red Bull driver to pass him after making a mistake at the exit of the last corner as they began their final lap. By reclaiming the place Hulkenberg scored the team’s best result since the same race two years ago.

The exchange occured as Perez hunted Hulkenberg down over the final laps. The Red Bull driver suffered sidepod damage from contact with Oscar Piastri at turn four on the opening lap, later describing his sidepod as being “completely destroyed” from the collision. Over the closing laps Perez, on softer tyres than his rival, gained on the Haas driver and came within DRS range.

At the end of the penultimate lap Hulkenberg touched the gravel at the final corner, allowing Perez to close. The Red Bull driver passed Hulkenberg into turn three, but the Haas took advantage of a slipstream and DRS down the run to turn four to sweep back down the outside of the Red Bull.

Hulkenberg held on to claim the position by half a second. He wasn’t close enough to Verstappen to gain advantage of the other Red Bull driver’s 10-second time penalty for causing a collision with Lando Norris. However, Hulkenberg described his run from ninth on the grid to sixth as a “hell of a race” for him and his team.

“Especially at the end, it got so intense,” he told the official F1 channel. “But I think it was intense at the front too with Max and Lando – so it was happening everywhere!”

“It was touch and go. I was really pushing hard to keep Checo behind, but the last two laps, my tyres were kind of really done with it. I almost lost the car completely out of turn ten in a big way, went onto the gravel a bit and then had a big tank-slapper.

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“Into [turn] three, I let him edge in front, so I could have DRS for the next straight, which obviously put me back in front. Luckily it was the final lap, because I would have not survived another lap.”

It was Hulkenberg’s fifth top ten finish over the first 11 rounds of the championship and his best result for Haas since joining them in 2023. Team mate Kevin Magnussen also scored points in eighth. Hulkenberg admitted he had not expected the team to enjoy such a strong result at the Red Bull Ring.

“I’m very happy,” Hulkenberg said. “Double points for the team and in a big way. I didn’t expect that – obviously, one car out or something. But still, an amazing team performance, today and this weekend.

“I think, it’s confirmed now that we’re in the midfield on all sorts of different tracks. We are competitive, we can fight everyone. And that’s really great news and I’m very happy about that.”

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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18 comments on “Hulkenberg ‘let Perez pass’ in unseen last-lap move – then re-passed him”

  1. Perez race was ruined by his incompetence. The cause of the damage wasn’t the incident with Charles and Oscar but starting so far down with the best car of the field.

    1. the best car of the field is probably the McLaren at this moment. Verstappen is probably doing much of the difference

    2. It’s also doubly ridiculous we didn’t get to see any of the fight since despite lasting for many laps, which makes it even more pathetic on Perez’s, the most dramatic part of it occurred after the crash.

      While, IMO, the McLaren seems to have the edge in pace, RBR is still well clear of Mercedes and Ferrari. So, Perez still has no excuse. Hell, he wasn’t even far ahead of Ricciardo at the end.

  2. Huge performance by Hulk, holding a red bull with a Haas

    If Perez will keep racing at this level he’ll be p8 in the standings at the end of the year, with a top 2 car

    1. Yes, in a way reminds of webber in the vettel era, there’s been some season where he ended really far back.

      Also I hope by “top 2 car” you mean that verstappen’s and perez’s cars are the top 1 and 2, cause on balance red bull has been clearly the best car this season, mclaren is barely able to compete now and it wasn’t in the first races.

      1. @esploratore1 in the period from 2009 to 2013, Vettel’s finishing positions were 2nd, 1st, 1st, 1st and 1st in the WDC, whilst Webber was 4th, 3rd, 3rd, 6th and 3rd.

        During those years, Webber’s points haul was 83%, 94.5%, 66%, 64% and 50% of Vettel’s total. If you look at Perez from 2022 to the current point in 2024, he managed 67% of Verstappen’s score in 2022, 49.5% in 2023 and just under 50% right now.

        In terms of where he finishes in the WDC, Perez looks better in terms of position (2nd, 3rd and 5th). However, in terms of percentage of points scored versus Verstappen, comparing Perez to Webber is a bit unfair to Webber as he generally performed better than Perez.

        A more apt comparison in terms of relative points scoring ability would be Massa relative to Alonso in the period from 2010 to 2013, when Massa managed to score 57%, 46%, 44% and 46% of what Alonso did.

      2. Webber gets a bit of a bad rap, he was no slouch, but admitted he had problems getting the most out of the Pirelli tyres. That put him behind a bit in a competitive season like 2012, but when Red Bull had a significant advantage over the competition – such as in 2011 and later on in 2013 – he was pretty solid. Certainly better than Pérez by some margin.

        1. Also, he had infinitely more unreliability than Perez, almost always lost 4+ places due to launches and had cars that were not nearly as dominant compared to the rest of the field, except for maybe 2013 when it seemed he had checked out and given up.

          More importantly, we NEVER saw Webber go through periods like Perez where he was incredibly slow or incapable of getting into Q3 let alone failing to get out of Q1.

          1. Red Bull would love to have someone like Webber in the car these days. He was fast but lost the races at the start, then clawed back to podiums or close to that while Vettel won everything.

            At the beginning Perez was similar, but he was bad already on qualifying, then used the superior pace of the car to come 4th or something like that. Now 6 drivers installed themselves on the half a second he always leaves on the table to Max and it doesn’t look he’ll be capable of cutting that gap in the slightest.

  3. BLS (@brightlampshade)
    30th June 2024, 21:10

    This season has shown why Hulkenberg is so highly rated, despite having little to show for it on paper.

    1. After all, he never got a chance at a top team, I don’t see why he wouldn’t have been able to win some races if he had ever been given a chance, like perez.

      1. It’s why I’ve always found how media and fans often judge drivers patently absurd. There is no one in the media who thinks Vettel was the best driver on the grid in 2010-2013 in isolation, but until his struggles at Ferrari and unremarkable drives with AM, you still had many putting him in the same bracket as other GOATs.

  4. Hulk frequently outperforms that car, usually in qualifying, occasionally in the race. Awesome performance from him today, meanwhile Checo sleepwalks through another weekend.

  5. This Red Bull chassis will be sold way cheaper than the others in the future. No wins and a bucket load of embarassments in its history.

  6. The Red Bull driver passed Hulkenberg into turn three, but the Haas took advantage of a slipstream and DRS down the run to turn four to sweep back down the outside of the Red Bull.

    Absolute zero brains by Perez here. Last year Sainz did the same to him and his engineer needed to advise Perez on the correct execution. Really? Is he seriously paid to be an embarrassment? There’s no way he would not learn from last year.

    1. I have a feeling he’ll be so demoralized by yet another collapse that he’ll never get back on the pace again, especially without the half second advantage he used to be able to take for granted.

  7. Keeping a Red Bull Racing car behind is a note-worthy achievement even if Checo had sidepod damage, although still a big tyre advantage, & I’m positive Max with the same damage would still get past a Haas on a relatively overtaking-friendly circuit without much struggle.

  8. Into [turn] three, I let him edge in front, so I could have DRS for the next straight

    Which is why there should never be back to back DRS zones and why the DRS detection points should never be on the entry to a corner as it just creates these sort of silly anti-racing games.

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