Will Hülkenberg hire heap more pressure on Sebastian Vettel? — MPH

The confirmation of Nico Hülkenberg as Aston Martin’s official reserve driver might be read as simply the logical continuation of last year’s status quo after he did a fine stand-in job at Silverstone and the Nürburgring. Or it might be interpreted as a ramping up of the pressure upon Sebastian Vettel after his inauspicious first race for the team in Bahrain, where he collided with Esteban Ocon’s Alpine in a way unfortunately similar to several of his collisions over the previous couple of years. In close-quarter wheel-to-wheel situations his judgement seems to be a little fuzzy.

The Bahrain incident – which came in the wake of Ocon overtaking at the end of the pit straight – had similarities to Vettel’s incidents with Valtteri Bottas at Paul Ricard and Daniel Ricciardo at Austin, both 2018, in that he didn’t account for the aero loss these cars suffer when side-on to another car in close proximity. It’s a phenomenon Ricciardo himself has suffered from – at last year’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix when battling Carlos Sainz – and he even referred to the result as ‘a Seb spin’.  The other similarity was to Vettel’s collision with Max Verstappen at the 2019 British Grand Prix when his braking point was too late for a car with much of its front downforce robbed by the car in front.

He’s far too experienced a driver not to be aware of these hazards, yet he’s still being repeatedly caught out by them. It’s as if the decisions to make the moves are being made in the split-second heat of emotion, after something has gone wrong. In every one of those incidents listed above, he’s either just been overtaken by a car and is trying to retaliate, or – with Bottas – has had a move frustrated by the other driver. The more the incidents have happened, the more frequently they seem to happen, as if he has got onto some sort of downward spiral in his state of mind. He’s an intensely competitive man who places enormous pressure upon himself and one wonders if this is creating some sort of boiling frustration within him which triggers the impulsive reaction when something negative happens – like being overtaken – and he tries to instantly react. Rather like his road rage reaction to Lewis Hamilton behind the safety car that time in Baku.

His insistence in the heat of the moment in Bahrain that Ocon had changed his line (which he clearly and very visibly had not) would seem to support this theory of the errors being driven by emotion. It’s gone on too long now for it just to be an unfortunate run. It might well be that he needs help in working through his trait, to better control the emotion in moments of stress so that better decisions are made. But it’s a tricky one because it’s in moments of stress that the hard-wired traits in people tend to come to the surface.