The Bahrain Grand Prix was an experience of mixed emotions at Haas, with Hülkenberg putting in an impressive performance on Saturday before the team struggled on Sunday.
Nico Hülkenberg made his full time Formula 1 return with Haas at the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend. Despite his impressive qualifying showing, making it into Q3 amongst the competitive midfield, his race pace on Sunday didn’t allow him to maintain his P10 starting position.
“It’s like going to a fight but without weapons!”
After a frustrating Grand Prix which saw the Haas driver make contact with the Alpine of Esteban Ocon on the opening lap, Hülkenberg eventually finished in P15, two positions behind teammate Magnussen. Discussing his race he described it as “difficult” and “frustrating”.
“A tricky race, especially the first half,” said Hülkenberg. “Apparently I had some contact with someone on Turn 1 or Turn 2 on lap one, which I didn’t even really notice.
“I was trying, I was a bit squeezed in Turn 1, I was trying to avoid everyone, but apparently obviously there was some contact and then consequently some damage which was very compromising to my race because I lost a lot of downforce. It’s like going to a fight but without weapons!
“So that’s a bit frustrating and I think I had quite some stuff missing from the front wing and lost a lot of load with that, and grip of course. It made the first half of the race very, very tough. I was just going through my tyres like a hot knife through butter.”
Midway through the race, Haas elected to change Hülkenberg’s front wing during his lap 26 pitstop, allowing him to be more competitive in the second half of the race. However, the damage had already been done at that point, preventing the German from scoring points.
Hülkenberg admits running a damaged car in the opening portion of the race limited how much useful information he could gain from the experience after his hiatus from full time competition.
“Tricky to say because the first half is so blurry for me now,” Hülkenberg said of what was learned from the race. “It was just a survival, to be honest and then very difficult. I was running around with a damaged car, which had a lot less downforce than it should have had as a healthy car.
“I was very relieved when we pitted it for the new front wing, and the car suddenly came back to being normal. But by then I had lost so much ground already that it was tough to recover.
“So first half not much to learn, because that was not the real car. The second half of the race for sure I take my learnings from there. Which is for me, my feelings, my findings and emotions about that, and I’ll process those, and regroup in two weeks.”
“It’s a known feeling. It’s exciting.”
Despite the mixed weekend, Hülkenberg showed his excitement to be back to competing in Formula 1 claiming that the feeling is “different but not that different” to what he is familiar with.
“I’m very happy to be honest. It’s a known feeling. It’s exciting. It’s the start of a long year, a long season.
“Obviously Saturday was very good, Sunday was not too good. But we take the findings and the learnings. And I expected that it’s not going to be all great from the beginning. It’s always a steep learning curve, and learn as you go.
“Of course in the detail, there’s differences, but at the end of the day, a grand prix is still 300kms, the cars are still fast, still starting with 110kgs. So it’s different, but it’s not so different as well.”
“In the race it felt like we made a step…”
On the other side of the garage, teammate Kevin Magnussen claimed to be “pleasantly surprised” by the team’s race pace. Magnussen started a lowly P17 after a disappointing Q1 exit in qualifying, but managed to recover to a respectable P13 on Sunday despite admitting the team “didn’t really get the strategy right”.
“I was pleasantly surprised with the race pace.” He said. “I might be wrong, maybe when I go back and look at the lap times it’s a different story. I think I started P17, and we didn’t really get the strategy right.
“Still, we made up a few positions and it felt like the pace was alright in terms of where we came from. I think we were struggling a lot in testing and also in Friday practice with tyre wear. And in the race it felt like we made a step, so that’s the positive thing.”
