It was a chaotic afternoon at Interlagos during the 2026 F1 São Paulo GP, which saw Nico Hülkenberg eventually finish in tenth. A bit of a downgrade compared to his fourth place grid spot, but nonetheless a decent result after some fierce battles.
It begs the question if Hülkenberg wouldn’t have liked some more rain, as the performance deficit was clearly bigger when the track was dry. He had dropped to P8 before the switch to slicks, before the Ferraris got him later in the race. A beautiful late pass on Arvid Lindblad got him a point.
“Did I miss having more rain,” the Audi driver contemplated. “The conditions are what the conditions are. You have to take it as it is.
“We obviously got some rain at certain points. It was a bit different to the forecast, but I don’t know if it would have made a great difference to our race.”
Additional rain did eventually come in the closing stages, but the German didn’t feel it made that much difference.
“Tricky,” said Hülkenberg about the final few laps. “But the proper rain was luckily only in the last lap and then after the race. If that rain had hit 5 minutes earlier it would have been quite different.”
In the second half of the race, Hülkenberg had a battle with Franco Colapinto, who forced him to take the escape road in the Senna S as the Argentinian got very aggressive in defence. The one-time polesitter at Interlagos decided he’d rather have a penalty than try the overtake for a third time as Alpine had a rocket on the straights.
He kept the position and was indeed rewarded with a ten-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Hülkenberg wasn’t too bothered with the penalty afterwards.
“I don’t know, I need to have a look from the outside how it looked. The second time obviously I tried around the outside, but typically he runs the driver on the outside wide.
“I don’t know, we corrected it afterwards.”
McNish calls Hülkenberg’s overtake a “statement” after Colapinto incident at 2026 F1 São Paulo GP
Team boss Alan McNish was a bit more elaborate on why Hülkenberg didn’t give back the position on Lap 49. He felt it wasn’t a cut-and-dry situation given how the track runs.
“Because for us it wasn’t clear,” McNish explained Audi’s decision. “Normally, if you’re ahead of the apex, then you have the right to be given position. Where the apex of turn one is, because of how it drops down into the S, then it’s very subjective where the apex is.
“Now, Colapinto never hit the apex. He was nowhere near the apex. He was a long way from the apex.
“But the FIA defined where the apex line was. And at that point, Colapinto had run wide out. So for us, it was a very debatable situation.
“And we honestly didn’t know which way to go with it. And if we had given it back, then we were stuck into the same position.”
Adding to the decision was the fact that Hülkenberg’s performance was good enough that being stuck behind Colapinto would be the worse option.
McNish added: “And the other factor was that by the time we had been able to review, Nico was gone so far ahead. He pulled two seconds in a lap.
“So it’s one that always you have to follow the FIA ruling. There’s no question. But it wasn’t clear for us that it wasn’t Nico’s corner, is the best way to put it.
“But when it turned into the intermediate, he had pushed ahead, pulled ahead from Lindblad. And then [on] the intermediate, he was on a mission.
“That was definitely straight onto the back of Lindblad. And the overtake was one that definitely, I think, was a good aggressive.
“And it was also a delivery of that statement. Give us a penalty, but we can still get it back.”
