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Nico Hulkenberg is back in Formula 1 again for his fourth COVID-prompted stand-in appearance at the team now known as Aston Martin.
Is he the right choice as Sebastian Vettel’s stand-in? Should he still be on the grid full-time? Does he have a hope of impressing having not tested the 2022 generation cars?
Our writers gave their verdicts on Hulkenberg’s situation this weekend.
He’s got to quickly master a very different style
Scott Mitchell
The 2022 cars require a different driving style that Hulkenberg only has three sessions to try to get on top of before the important parts of the weekend. That’s a big ask even though he’s been driving in the simulator.
At low speed, these cars are so much heavier and stiffer than their predecessors that they behave very different dynamically. They are more prone to locking and require a different technique in the middle-to-end phase of braking. And if you get it wrong they understeer horrifically, and the time loss is extreme.
Plus, Bahrain’s a horrible track for those characteristics. Especially Turn 10. We banged that particular drum hard during testing. The point is that this is a pretty big challenge and there are a few areas where it is arguably a tougher ask than when Hulkenberg was a stand-in at the last minute in 2020.
He’s generally more prepared than he was back then because he’s in a dedicated reserve driver role whereas he had clearly quite quickly relaxed into ‘not an F1 driver anymore life’ two years ago!
But the reality is Hulkenberg hasn’t raced an F1 car (or anything) in a while, and has been out of a full-time drive since 2019. He will inevitably have lost some sharpness and his reference is outdated.
I think he’s capable of rising to this challenge in a very admirable way. I’m just keen not to understate the size of the task ahead!
Hulkenberg should still be in F1 full-time
Gary Anderson
This is exactly the situation that reserve drivers are there for. He will be coming in a bit blind having not driven the car but he will have had experience in the simulator and he has the overall experience to know that he needs to use the practice sessions to get up to speed and save the white knuckle bit for qualifying.
I don’t understand why Hulkenberg has not got a full-time drive.
He is a very competent driver with lots of experience that would be beneficial to lots of teams.
Yes I know he hasn’t stood on the podium in F1 yet but that’s as much through bad luck as anything else. Now he has another chance to show his worth and I’m sure he will take it with open arms.
He’s better prepared than you might think
Edd Straw
Aston Martin will benefit from being well-prepared for a driver being out of action given Hulkenberg is fully embedded in the team and therefore will be as ready for his stand-in role as he can be for a driver who hasn’t yet driven this generation of F1 cars.
It’s a surprise that F1 teams that leave nothing to chance are sometimes somewhat slapdash with their reserve drivers as in a tight constructors’ championship battle a point or two could potentially make a big difference. Aston Martin, perhaps thanks to the experience of losing both drivers at times in 2020, has a proven, vastly experienced driver on standby.
Hulkenberg is also a driver who is a reserve in the very real sense of the word. He’s not a young driver waiting for his big break, but a proven professional who at the age of 34 knows most of his F1 career is probably behind him.
If a permanent seat were to become available, Aston Martin would look elsewhere, but by having a reserve who should be as race ready as he can be it should ensure that it is not unduly disrupted this weekend.
Even if he can’t score points, which will be a big ask given he is coming to the real-world car cold, Hulkenberg knows the game inside out so will be able to do the job in terms of building car understanding and prepping for the weekend while at worst being a safe pair of hands in the race.
Well done to Aston Martin for being ready for this eventuality and fully understanding what the reserve driver’s role is.
Aston will limit his impact
Mark Hughes
Hulkenberg’s not called super-sub for no reason. His 2020 stand-ins at this team when it was Racing Point were at times terrific – he qualified third, don’t forget, in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone.
It’s a bigger transition this time with the new-era cars and the specific way they need to be driven, but generally he’ll be fine, just like Kevin Magnussen was in testing last week in the Haas.
But no matter how good he is, if the Aston Martin is not a front rank car – and it hasn’t looked it in testing – his performance will not carry much impact.
If it was an absolute front-rank car he was stepping into and he ended up winning the grand prix – which he’d be perfectly capable of doing – it would have a totally different implication and effect, even though the reality of his personal performance would be no different to how it will be in a less competitive car.
Similarly, had the Racing Point not been so competitive a car in 2020, Sergio Perez’s F1 career would likely now be over. Not because he’d have been performing badly; simply that the performances weren’t given any weight by the competitiveness of the car. That always defines everything.
He’s the wrong solution
Jack Benyon
I think Hulkenberg deserved a lot more from his Formula 1 career, but what is he gaining from random, one-off appearances in F1?
In a time where testing is rare, why aren’t we mandating young drivers as reserves to provide opportunities for those coming through? This will be the fourth race weekend Hulkenberg’s taken (through no fault of his own, I should add) a seat a junior could have benefitted from.
F1 has made a good step in mandating two junior outings in free practices per team this year. Why not go a step further and have a junior reserve to appear in case of COVID/illness on race weekends?
With Oscar Piastri sat on the sidelines it’s never been more obvious that the system is not geared towards helping the next generation, quite the opposite in many respects.
I appreciate teams shouldn’t be at a disadvantage through losing a driver to illness, but there are enough capable youngsters out there to negate the experience deficit, I reckon.
And the teams would get a chance to evaluate a potential driver for the future. There are mutual wins there.
