Audi misses out on points at Sepang after penalty and crash

Audi left the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia with the feeling of having let an opportunity slip away. The German team that had shown a promising pace during the weekend, left Sepang empty-handed after a series of incidents that weighed down its performance, the sanction on Gabriel Bortoleto for his crash with Carlos Sainz the loss of Nico Hülkenberg's last point on the last lap and the fine imposed by the FIA for an unsafe release in the pits turned the Malaysian event into a weekend to forget.

Bortoleto, who had qualified tenth after a great performance in Q3, saw how his race twisted when he made contact with Carlos Sainz's Williams, the incident cost him a ten-second penalty and damaged his car, leaving him without options to fight for points: "First I want to apologize to Carlos, I ended up touching him and maybe I destroyed his race, a bit of mine too, I created damage on my car and after that we were too far back to fight for anything, I apologize to him, to my team, to his team and we go to Singapore" declared the Brazilian with self-criticism.

Hülkenberg, for his part, was about to score a point for Audi. The German who started from fifteenth position, came back positions and stayed in the fight until the last lap, when he was overtaken by the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad: "Obviously, a few times now I have been close, but in the end it wasn't good enough, our package here, that's why we couldn't keep that point at the end, but if we are honest, we only got there because of some retirements and problems at the front. I felt it was always a remote possibility, but I'm much happier with my performance compared to yesterday. It was a clean race on my part, good fight and a good afternoon" explained the German.

Audi's weekend was complicated even more by the fine that the FIA imposed on the team for an unsafe release during a pit stop by Hülkenberg, the automatic system showed the green light when a mechanic was still in front of the car although the safety officer detected the problem immediately and put the red light back on. The sanction of 30,000 euros with 20,000 suspended, is a warning for the German team which will have to review its procedures to prevent a similar situation from happening again.

Allan McNish, Audi competition director, took stock of the weekend with a mix of satisfaction and frustration: "We got the car's pace, that was quite clear when we got to qualifying. I think we had put it in the right window and Gabi did a very good qualifying, Nico was at a similar pace until turn 14. These things happen, I think we got back to that point approximately at the end of the race. Not exactly the same point, but very close" he noted.

McNish acknowledged that losing points on the last lap for the second consecutive race is "a bit frustrating" but showed himself optimistic ahead of the future: "We know where our strengths and weaknesses are and we know we are a bit exposed and when the Safety Car came out we became a bit more vulnerable" he concluded.

Audi now faces the Singapore event with the hope of reversing its bad streak and scoring points again.