As if this year’s Hungarian Grand Prix needed any more drama, Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India lost its front wing while speeding towards Turn 1. What followed is fairly obvious.
Team principal Bob Fernley recently went on record saying that this type of incident will surely not happen again and that reliability and design integrity are key strengths for Force India.
Be that as it may, it sure didn’t stop Hulkenberg from becoming a passenger in his own car, speeding towards the tire barrier, nearly taking out Williams’ Valtteri Bottas in the process.
I have to admit, while watching the race and obviously all the replays, I hadn’t noticed how close Bottas came to being hit – which wouldn’t have affected his race much since he didn’t even score any points in Hungary.
Either way, it must have been a pretty scary moment for Nico and Daniil Kvyat as well, who was right behind him in his Red Bull.
Kvyat was bombarded all of a sudden with carbon fiber debris which is evident around the 45 second mark of the video.
Of course, what followed was that the Safety Car came on and made this arguably the most intense race of the year with both Mercedes cars crashing into the extremely persistent Daniel Ricciardo. Kvyat and Ricciardo took home second & third place, while Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel won the Grand Prix.
It’s a shame that nowadays F1 racing needs a late safety car in order to make things more exciting, especially since this means that an accident has to occur in the first place.