Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India to investigate turbo issue with Mercedes

Force India will work closely with Mercedes to try and rectify the turbo issues which prevented Nico Hulkenberg from starting the Belgian Grand Prix.

Hulkenberg was hit by a problem with the turbo during qualifying and it resurfaced during the formation lap at Spa-Francorchamps, with the team originally telling him to pit ahead of the start of the race. Hulkenberg was then told to take the start but the problem was still evident and the start was aborted to allow the Force India to be cleared from the grid.

With Hulkenberg never joining the race - in which team-mate Sergio Perez finished in a strong fifth place - deputy team principal Bob Fernley told F1i there would be investigations ahead of Monza.

“We had a bit of an issue with it [in qualifying] although that was not the reason he didn’t make Q3, but he had no boost, effectively,” Fernley said. “We thought we’d corrected it which is why he took the formation lap, but then it hadn’t done and we didn’t want to start with no boost because it would endanger others.

“We will work very hard with Mercedes to get it right because obviously we don’t want to have any failures there.”

And Fernley admits Hulkenberg’s issue took a bit of the shine off what was an impressive performance from the team in Belgium.

“A great day because I think we achieved a good result, Checo drove superbly. We beat some very good opposition fair and square. We didn’t quite have the pace to beat Lotus or Red Bull, I thought they were excellent, but for us I don’t think we could have expected any better.

“Disappointed in so much as that we couldn’t get both Checo and Nico in the points, and it sort of cost us fifth place by one point so we’ve got to battle back a bit now.”

Click here for F1i's driver ratings after the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.