Nico Hulkenberg (P10, 1 pt): 7.5/10
With his team mate Daniel Ricciardo effectively knocked out of the race on the first lap, it fell to Nico Hulkenberg to fly the Renault colours in Sunday's race. He'd already been consistently faster than the Aussie in practice and was also able to out-qualify Ricciardo to take up sixth place on the grid. But while he didn't suffer the same sort of race-ending calamity as his team mate, Hulkenberg nonetheless had a pretty terrible race: "Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong today," he said himself after the finish. "A poor start, a slow pit-stop and an unfortunate VSC timing." Wheel spin meant he lost three places on the first lap, and he then dropped to 17th after his sluggish service, leaving him with a mountain to climb in the second half of the race. He'd recovered to tenth place before the virtual safety car put an end to his ascent and caused him to briefly drop back out of the top ten, but he was able to get back into the points with a pass on Lance Stroll on lap 37 and after that he simply concentrated on successfully bringing the car home.
