A crash for Barrichello and car trouble for Hulkenberg left Williams point-less in Spa while Force India pulled further ahead of them in the championship.
| Rubens Barrichello | Nico Hulkenberg | |
| Qualifying position | 7 | 9 |
| Qualifying time comparison (Q3) | 1’46.602 (-0.451) | 1’47.053 |
| Race position | 14 | |
| Average race lap | 2’04.774 | |
| Laps | 0/44 | 43/44 |
| Pit stops | 0 | 2 |
Open lap times interactive chart in new window
Rubens Barrichello
Marked his 300th Grand Prix start by matching his best qualifying performance of the year with seventh, despite being the only driver in the top ten to use the hard tyres.
But it came to nothing when he crashed out on the first lap:
Despite my experience, it was very difficult to know how wet the track was on the opening lap, but it was fully wet when I came into Blanchimont. I was closing the door on Rosberg and when I touched the brakes, even though it was quite early, it wasn’t sufficient to stop the car. The car went straight on into Alonso, for which I’m sorry. It’s also sad for the team.
Rubens Barrichello
Compare Rubens Barrichello’s form against his team mate in 2010
Nico Hulkenberg
Made his third consecutive top ten start and moved up to seventh at first before being passed by Adrian Sutil at the restart.
But he lost over 25 seconds with an early pit stop and then ended up stuck behind Pedro de la Rosa. At one stage he was losing up to four seconds per lap:
Pretty early on in the race I had a throttle control problem which made the car very difficult to handle, so we made an unscheduled stop, but the engine died in the box and had to be re-started.
As a result I dropped position and then had to cope in the rain without the full engine control, which caused some spins. We took some tyre gambles at the end to try and recover something.
Nico Hulkenberg
The gamble didn’t work and Hulkenberg spun having stayed out on slick tyres in the closing stages.
Compare Nico Hulkenberg’s form against his team mate in 2010
2010 Belgian Grand Prix
OEL
30th August 2010, 14:20
A shame for Williams. I think part of the reason Barrichello crashed into Alonso is because he was on the hard tyres, as they don’t get up to working temperature quick enough, so he probably had much less grip than the rest who had softs.
BasCB
31st August 2010, 7:40
I think it might have been a factor in the incident as well.
Hulkenberd drove pretty well this weekend, shame about the car trouble and his gamble not working out.
Enigma
30th August 2010, 15:28
Barrichello had a very good strategy – he would only need to pit once, for the intermediates. I think he could finish 5th or 6th.
Calum
30th August 2010, 18:28
“No data for selected period” :P
Disappointing for Ruebens, but it just shows even the most experienced have wet weather errors so don’t go as hard on Vettel.
Mike
31st August 2010, 1:53
Is it only me who is starting to think Nico is regularly on the wrong strategy or playing the right gambles?
bosyber
31st August 2010, 15:31
That has been a feature of the Williams strategy now for some years I think. It doesn’t seem to pay off all that often for them either.
Klon
31st August 2010, 15:07
Well, disappointing weekend but at least the qualifying results show that Cosworth can work good on the straights, so Monza might become another double points finish for Williams.
bosyber
31st August 2010, 15:35
Well, at least Williams are quick again. If they manage to get both cars to the finish in Monza, they could beat FI there at least.
I am glad to hear about the car trouble for Huelkenberg, because I wondered what happened to him during the race. We didn’t see much of the happening in the back-midfield earlier in the race.
I think that after a rather difficult start to the season with rookie errors, he is now doing a pretty solid job keeping up with Barrichello on Saturday, and keeping the car in the race as best as possible. Now for Williams to not only use their recovered pace, but also get some sensible strategy and reliability going.
MacLeod
2nd September 2010, 9:51
With the FI speed on the straights you can forget that but at Monza i think Williams will stay behind Sutil, If Luizzi is replaced i think both FI will be in front of them. But as Italian maybe he tries to race for a difference and end up before his team mate.