Hulkenberg handed grid penalty for tyre error

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Nico Hulkenberg has been relegated one position on the German Grand Prix grid to eighth place as a result of a tyre error by Force India.

Following the end of qualifying, Hulkenberg was investigated after the team used a set of tyres which was labelled to be returned to Pirelli after the final practice session on Saturday morning. Explaining the decision, the stewards said: "During Q1 tyres without appropriate identification were used.

"The team returned electronically the wrong set of tyres and used these during Q1."

With Hulkenberg going on to reach Q3 and set his best time on a different set of tyres, the German originally qualified in seventh place. However, the stewards imposed a drop of one grid position for the error, relegating him to eighth behind Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas will start seventh ahead of Hulkenberg, with the second Force India of Sergio Perez in ninth and Felipe Massa's Williams tenth on the grid.

Starting with 13 sets of slick tyres at the beginning of the race weekend, teams have to hand back four sets of tyres by the end of Friday practice - one set after 40 minutes in FP1, one at the end of the first session and two after FP2 - and another two sets following FP3.

Carlos Sainz was also penalised after qualifying, with the Toro Rosso driver being given a three-place grid penalty as a result of impeding Massa at Turn 2 at the start of Q2.

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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.