The German driver had a relatively positive Saturday in Mexico, advancing to Q3 showing at times a good deal of speed. In spite of the P10 start, Hülkenberg is not completely satisfied with his day, as he feels like he could have had a better performance had he been more in tune with his Haas challenger like his teammate Kevin Magnussen, who will start from P7, and outqualified him for the second race in a row.
He opened up about his final run and what could have been had he not suffered from a small mistake at the end of qualifying.
“It didn’t come together that well. Particularly the last run on new tyres. It has been a struggle, to be honest, all weekend long. I’m struggling to find a good rhythm and to get a good connection with the car.
“Some runs are a little bit better than, then next run I go out and it’s kind of back to beginning and I struggle for rhythm and harmony. It’s been a challenging weekend from that point of view, some laps good, some laps just really kind of a struggle.
“The last run in Q3 wasn’t good, unfortunately.”
The former Renault driver cited the low grip conditions as one of the reasons which did not allow him to uncover the full potential of his car.
”It’s a typical Mexico scenario. The thin air just makes the car feel light. It’s hard to find the sweet spots and to get that bite, grip feeling. It’s quite common here, but this year maybe a little bit more. I don’t know why, but it’s just the way it is.”
What is sure is the fact that the VF-24 is far away from its predecessor, allowing its drivers to score over three times the points earned in the whole 2023 season.
“It’s competitive, however it is packaged.”
On the other hand, Friday’s disrupted FP2 due to Russell’s crash, combined with the compulsory Pirelli tyre test for the upcoming 2025 season, didn’t allow him or the majority of the other drivers to have time to test the actual tyres for the race.
“I think it’s a question mark because nobody got to try the normal medium and hard yesterday. So, a bit of an unknown and I think we’ll only really find out tomorrow once we start racing.”
A decisive moment during qualifying was Yuki Tsunoda’s Q2 crash, which cut the session short, thus helping the drivers which had opted to return earlier on track after the tyre change.
The 37-year-old crossed the line with seconds to spare before the red flag was thrown, moving up to P8 as he had been in the relegation zone.
“Yeah, I think I crossed the timeline and there was already orange flashing, and then a second later was the red flag. It was lucky, but a good call.
“I don’t know, seventh sense or something. We were actually going to wait and go later, but then I said, ‘no, let’s go guys, let’s go with Kevin now and just get on with it’.
“That was a lucky good call, otherwise we would have been into that red flag.”
