Hulkenberg: eighth place at Sepang 'reasonable'

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Force India's Nico Hulkenberg said that he felt finishing the Malaysian Grand Prix in the points in eighth place was a good result, although he was sure he could have finished better if he hadn't been caught up in the fracas at turn 1 at the start of the race.

"Finishing eighth is a reasonable result, given the circumstances of the race," he said afterwards.

"It was quite a tough afternoon: I made a very good start, but coming to turn one I had to avoid the accident between Rosberg and Vettel and that cost me two positions.

"Being stuck behind Jenson cost me a lot of time in the first two stints and I just couldn’t overtake him. Losing the track position so early on made it very difficult to finish higher up, despite the speed we had in the car today."

Even so, Hulkenberg said that he felt the team had chosen the right strategy for the race.

"It’s very hard to overtake here and it just didn’t play out in our favour. All in all, we can be happy about putting two cars inside the points; we have increased our advantage a little and it should help us in what is going to be a very interesting end of the season.”

He added that he was particularly looking forward to next week's race in Japan.

"Suzuka is one of my favourite tracks - it's just got a great flow. You go from one corner straight into to the next and it's a proper old-school track; it's so much fun to drive, especially in qualifying when you have low fuel, soft tyres and lots of grip. You have some high-speed sections, but the main feature is the great rhythm you get as you drive through the lap.

“The track has several great corners: the best section is the Esses, which are pretty cool and so quick - it's three or four corners at once. They're all hooked up, so if you make a mistake in one you can just forget about the rest, you've already lost so much time.

“The other highlight of the Japanese weekend is the fans. They are incredible: it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, or what the weather is doing, they are there outside the hotel or at the track waiting for you. It's great to see their passion and knowledge for our sport. They always bring us presents - most often candy, but I once got a very cute teddy koala bear!"

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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.