Vettel for Laureus Award, Hulkenberg Laureus ambassador to be present

David Bodapati March 26, 2014

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Kuala Lumpur, 25 March 2014: Laureus World Sports Academy Chairman Edwin Moses has announced a reduced programme of activity at the 2014 Laureus World Sports Awards in Kuala Lumpur, following the confirmation that Malaysian flight MH370 had been lost in the Indian Ocean.

Several events have been put on hold ahead of the Laureus Awards Ceremony, which takes place March 26. Meanwhile, Niko Hulkenberg of Sahara Force India and a Laureus ambassador will be present at the event today. Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel is in contention for the top award, the sportsman of the year award with other greats like Rafael Nadal also in the nominations. The Red Bull Team of Mark Webber and Seb Vettel are also nominated for the team of the year award.

Edwin Moses said: “Everyone in the Laureus World Sports Academy has been upset by this terrible tragedy. With the Laureus World Sports Awards in Kuala Lumpur this year, we feel particularly close to the Malaysian people at this time which makes what has happened even more personal and distressing. We feel the appropriate action at this time is to scale down some of our activities over the next two days.

“On behalf of the Laureus Academy and the wider Laureus Family around the world, I would like to share our sadness at this latest news and pray for the passengers and crew, and their families of this awful accident which has touched so many people in so many different countries of the world.

“We have decided in light of the tragic news, we would like to adapt this afternoon’s football event to better reflect our collective feeling at this difficult time. We have made a commitment to a legacy of Laureus’ presence for young people in Malaysia. We made a commitment to the young people for this event which we want to honour at this time when sport can be an opportunity to unite us in grief and in hope. We dedicate the Laureus All Stars Unity Cup to the families and loved ones of the victims of MH370.”

Driver’s View: Nico Hulkenberg’s interview ahead of the Malaysian GP as he attends the Laureus Awards function in KL on Wednesday:

Nico, looking back on Melbourne, did the weekend unfold as you expected?

“I tried to be open-minded going into the race and in reality it was all quite straightforward. It almost felt like a normal race from last year with no major surprises. There were no concerns for us with the fuel management, which was helped by the extra parade lap and the early safety car, and we ran reliably during all the sessions, which is a big positive to take forward.”

Now that we’ve had a race weekend, how did you find the car to drive?

“Again it’s not too dissimilar to last year. It’s a bit slower because of the regulations and you feel the loss of downforce compared with 2013. Overtaking also seemed to be quite difficult, unless you are following a car that is really struggling. For example, you could see that Fernando [Alonso] couldn’t really make a move on me.”

Were the tyres a bigger factor than you expected in Australia?

“We had issues with front left graining in the race, which we didn’t have all weekend. I think it was due to the cooler temperatures and it cost quite a bit of performance in the first two stints on the soft tyre. On the medium it was pretty good.”

Based on what you learned in Melbourne, what kind of championship can we expect this year?

“This year we’ll see bigger jumps and changes in the pecking order during the season. There are still some teams that need to sort out their issues and they will probably become stronger. All teams, including us, will have room for improvement and development is going to be very fast.”

What can we expect in Malaysia this weekend?

“Malaysia is going to be a tough challenge with totally different track characteristics and higher temperatures, which always leads to higher tyre degradation. It should be a good test of the new cars because it’s much more open than Melbourne with a nice variation of high and low-speed corners, plus two long straights.”

ends