Nico Hülkenberg shouldn’t have been allowed to take part in Q2, but the FIA didn’t notice a track limit violation until it was too late – and Alexander Albon suffered as a result.
The FIA made a real mistake in qualifying for the Formula 1 race in Bahrain. Because it allowed a driver to take part in Q2 who should not have been allowed to take part at all. Nico Hülkenberg had not actually set a valid time that would have taken him into the second qualifying session.
Hülkenberg’s fastest lap in Q1 was invalid because he had all four wheels off the track at Turn 11, thus violating the track limits. The problem was that the FIA only noticed this too late. Q2 had already started by the time they realized it and Hülkenberg was back on the track.
But Alexander Albon should have been driving there, and it was he who suffered as a result of this situation. The Williams driver had been eliminated in 16th place in Q1, but would have made the cut in 15th place if Hülkenberg’s time had been canceled in time.
“This is frustrating,” says a annoyed Team Principal James Vowles on Sky. ‘The track limits are monitored live, but the result of Hülkenberg’s offense came much too late – at a point when we no longer had a chance of getting into Q2,’ he says.
Vowles: ‘It’s not just about one position’
The case ended up in front of the stewards, who annulled Hulkenberg’s Q2 times and also deleted his invalid Q1 lap of 1:31.998 minutes. This leaves his previous time of 1:32.067 minutes, which was slower than Albon’s (1:32.040 minutes).
Hülkenberg is now in his regular position, but this does not help Albon, as he has been deprived of his Q2 chance.
Despite Nico setting the 13th fastest time in Q2, a very late call by the stewards resulted in his final lap of Q1 being deleted.
Nico was relegated to P16 – a disappointing outcome after a great Quali performance. We look forward to tomorrow’s race BahrainGP pic. twitter.com/7FmJ0nV5Ww
— Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber (@stakef1team_ks) April 12, 2025
Vowles is convinced that under normal circumstances Albon would have had the pace to make it into Q3, as shown by team-mate Carlos Sainz, who finished qualifying in eighth place and has so far always lost out to the Thai driver this season.
“What we need to understand now – and I’m still waiting for a report from the FIA – is why the whole thing was analyzed so much later. Because it’s not just about one position, several positions could have been lost,” says the Briton.
FIA admits mistake
The FIA issued a statement after the session: “There are a number of track limit hot spots that are continuously monitored live. These have priority. Based on previous sessions, Turn 11 was not identified as a particularly relevant area for track limits,” it said.
A mixed qualifying here in Bahrain.
Carlos is progressing in the car every week, seeing him qualify P8 for tomorrow’s race.
For Alex, it’s a frustrating result. The team didn’t execute his lap as well as we could have, compromising his progress into Q2.
We’ll review this as a… pic.twitter.com/C7RVCYT2kW
— Atlassian Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) April 12, 2025
“In retrospect, however, this turn should have been higher on our list of priorities. Unfortunately, checks in areas such as Turn 11 take a little longer than in prioritized zones. In this case, the timing of the review unfortunately meant that it was not possible to act before the start of Q2. As soon as we found out about the incident, we reacted.”
“We are working to further expand and improve our resources, systems and processes,” said the FIA, which admits: ‘In this case, we made a mistake.’
Timing error when driving out of the pits
Despite the mistake, Williams also has to admit that they were only in this situation because Albon’s time was only enough for 15th place. But the team blames itself: “This time it’s our fault,” Vowles admits, because the timing was not right before the decisive run.
According to Vowles, Albon was held up in the pit lane when driving out of the garage and was therefore unable to complete an ideal outlap. “We can’t afford to make mistakes like that,” Albon said angrily.
“We were supposed to drive out with the train of cars, but in the end we had to wait until everyone had passed,” he explains. ”We were there for three minutes. I think the tire temperature dropped by about 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, and these tires don’t like that at all.”
“Then I overtook three or four cars during the outlap just to get one timed lap in,” he continues. In the end, the tires were ‘ice cold’ in the first few corners, so he speaks of an unfortunate crash.
More chances in the race than in Suzuka
Although he admits that he did not feel particularly comfortable in the car, Williams had made a number of changes to it. “But actually we didn’t have the pace to get knocked out in Q1 – so it’s a shame,” says the Williams driver, who will have to start the race from 15th place on Sunday.
But he doesn’t want to talk about damage limitation: “I don’t think it will be that bad,” Albon says, adding that it won’t be like in Suzuka, when the race was quite static.
Here, it should be more strategic: “Maybe one stop, maybe two – I’m hoping for two, just to get ahead,” he says. “On Friday, we had really good pace – considering our place in the midfield. Let’s see if we can take advantage of that.”
