Nico Hulkenberg once more asserted himself as a force to be reckoned with within Formula 1, as he put his Renault Sport Formula 1 Team car into seventh position on the grid at today’s Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying – meaning that he earns the title of ‘best of the rest’ outside of the top three teams.
Unfortunately, Hulkenberg was hit with a five place grid penalty for changing his gearbox, and thus starts behind team-mate Jolyon Palmer. Nevertheless, encouraged by his strong pace today, he is looking forwards to the race and challenge ahead of him.
“I’m very happy about the performance of the car today, in fact it’s been really good all weekend long,” commented the German. “We’ve found a very good harmony and balance and it was a pleasure to exploit this in qualifying.”
Hulkenberg has performed consistently throughout the season, scoring all of Renault’s points to date. He hopes that this trend will continue into tomorrow’s race. the last one before the summer break.
“Of course, the gearbox penalty is far from ideal, but it happens sometimes; there was no option other than changing it. The long runs looked quite promising yesterday so there’s good potential for the race, we have a strong car so we should recover well.”
