Sauber driver Nico Hülkenberg gets stuck in traffic on his second hot lap in Australian qualifying – the result: qualifying defeat and elimination in Q1
Nico Hülkenberg has earned a reputation as an excellent qualifier in the past two years at Haas – so the surprise is all the greater on Saturday in Melbourne that the German loses the first qualifying duel of the year against his new teammate Gabriel Bortoleto!
While the young Brazilian even makes it into Q2 in his first Formula 1 qualifying, Hülkenberg is eliminated in 17th place – the veteran is only 63 thousandths of a second behind his teammate: “If you look at the times, the field is very compact, which means that even small things can have a big impact,” explains Hülkenberg after qualifying.
In this specific case, for example, ‘I had some traffic in the first sector on my second fast lap, which practically threw me out of Q1,’ reports Hülkenberg. A look at the data reveals: In fact, Hülkenberg set a time of 26.506 seconds on his first hot lap in the first sector – and only a 26.656 on the second, due to the other cars.
So if he had been able to get the time again and not lost the one and a half hundredths, he would have finished ahead of Bortoleto. Therefore, he “had a bit of bad luck and bad luck” in a qualifying that overall “did not go quite smoothly”, says the German, who does not want to accept that as the only excuse: “At the end of the day, I think we just struggled a bit,” he says on Sky.
Hülkenberg: “I don’t yet feel like the boss in the car”
“I still don’t feel completely at home in the car, which is actually normal, and also somehow logical when you change teams and have a different car,” explains the Sauber returnee: “I’m still in this familiarization phase,” says Hülkenberg, “I don’t yet feel like the boss in the car – it just takes a bit of time for that confidence to grow”.
Although the difficulties are “no surprise” in this context, the 37-year-old admits with regard to the result: “It feels like we didn’t maximize our potential today.” Hülkenberg would like to change that on Sunday, explains with a view to the weather: “Let’s see what the conditions are like tomorrow. If it rains, it’s a new game.”
But Hülkenberg explains that he doesn’t want to claim that Sauber has sacrificed qualifying performance in terms of set-up because of the threat of rain, and that it only makes sense to a limited extent: “The compromises you really have to make for a rain set-up are pretty big – and I think it would be too much of a disadvantage.”
