Nico Hulkenberg lamented his “one-way” trip in the “wrong direction” after his superb qualifying performance in Canada resulted in a 15th-place finish on race day. The Haas driver was the star of Saturday qualifying in Montreal as he secured a front row start in P2 in a dramatic wet session.
However, after his excitement at winning the job, things quickly started to go downhill as he was then hit with a three-place grid penalty for the Grand Prix after the superintendent found him guilty of having committed an infringement under a red flag during qualifying.
The move dropped him to fifth on the grid – passing Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in the process – but it was only the start of Hulkenberg’s journey down the pecking order.
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From the start of the race, Esteban Ocon immediately edged out the Haas driver to finish fifth, and he was also one of several drivers to lose by pit stop just before the safety car appeared after George Russell’s contact with a wall.
What followed was a largely anonymous afternoon en route to 15th place, one place behind Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri and one place ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu.
“It was a one-way street in the wrong direction today,” admitted Hulkenberg after the race. “It was, to some extent, to be expected.
“You’re still hoping for the best, so it’s better than what you had in previous races, but it confirmed once again that we have a lot of work to do on long-term speed and tire consistency, because it really killed our Sunday.”
As Haas’s efforts to extract pace from Sunday continue, the quest to unleash their car’s potential for Hulkenberg will not be helped by a lack of practice time. Germany’s FP2 session in Canada was prematurely aborted following engine problems – after a disrupted FP1 – but the 35-year-old is adamant there is more work to be done than just looking back at his lack of races.
“Obviously it’s not great,” he said, acknowledging his lack of FP2 races. “Maybe there’s a bit of performance there that we can’t extract for that reason.
“But, still, I think it looks, or feels like, we’re still a long way off. I think we’re looking for more than just workouts.”
The challenge of making the Haas machine more competitive on Sunday is also something Hulkenberg’s teammate Kevin Magnussen is acutely aware of. It was a disappointing day for the Dane, as he dropped from 13th on the starting grid to 17th.
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“We were just lacking in speed compared to what we wanted, and we still struggled with the tires – at least more than the others,” he said.
“What could be more difficult. I think the car in one lap has really good speed, we’ve shown that several times this year. But we have to work hard to try to maintain that strength for Sunday.”
Haas is currently eighth in the constructors’ standings with eight points, one ahead of ninth-placed Williams and one behind seventh-placed Alfa Romeo with the Austrian Grand Prix next weekend June 30-July 2.
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