Tag: Nico Hulkenberg

Frustrated Steiner calls for professional F1 stewards

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says it is time for Formula 1 to employ permanent stewards after being frustrated by a penalty for Nico Hulkenberg in Monaco. Hulkenberg (pictured at right, above, with Steiner) was penalized for causing a …

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says it is time for Formula 1 to employ permanent stewards after being frustrated by a penalty for Nico Hulkenberg in Monaco.

Hulkenberg (pictured at right, above, with Steiner) was penalized for causing a collision when overtaking Logan Sargeant on the opening lap, potentially making contact with Lance Stroll ahead of him. However, Steiner says there is no definitive footage that shows any contact was made, and pointed to numerous other collisions that went unpunished as a sign of the inconsistency in decision-making from volunteer stewards that necessitates the need for full-time professionals.

“Do we need a different system for the stewards?” Steiner asked. “Because every professional sport has got professionals being referees and stuff like this. F1 is one of the biggest sports in the world and we still have laymen deciding on the fate of people that invest millions in their careers. It’s always a discussion because there’s no consistency.

“I don’t want to blame any particular person on this, but if they’re not all there all the time then this is just like a job every…. It’s not even a job, because in a job you can get sacked because you get paid, and if you do a bad job you get sacked. You cannot get sacked because you do not get paid. I think we need to step it up.

“I think it’s now time. We’ve been discussing this for years and years and we always go back to this. Every other sport has professional referees, American racing — NASCAR, IndyCar, how many times do you hear problems with the stewards or with the race director’s decisions? Very rarely. But they are doing it completely differently, there are full-time people working there.

“I’m always saying ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ not that I have to prove that I was innocent, because that doesn’t work for me — that’s not how I look at life.”

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Confirming he had asked the FIA for an explanation and proof of the collision, he says there was no clear reasoning for why it wasn’t treated as a lap 1 incident that shows a further gap in the policing.

“Yes, we asked that and we got a very broad… It was never really decided and nobody really knows what was decided, so now they try to make a definition of what is a lap 1 incident. We had it last year with the black and orange flag, which we got three times and in the middle of season they changed the rules.

“For every team, especially for the teams from P5 to P10 this year, every point counts. Obviously we weren’t in the points and I wouldn’t say that we would have been in the points, but to prevent it in the future can you imagine if you were in the points and you got a penalty for this? This could change your end-of-year result, and by not having done anything wrong. So it’s pretty disappointing.”

Hulkenberg showing exactly why he was signed – Steiner

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the opening three races of the 2023 season have effectively demonstrated why he wanted to sign Nico Hulkenberg. Mick Schumacher was replaced after two years with Haas in favor of the vastly experienced …

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the opening three races of the 2023 season have effectively demonstrated why he wanted to sign Nico Hulkenberg.

Mick Schumacher was replaced after two years with Haas in favor of the vastly experienced Hulkenberg, the latter having not raced full-time in Formula 1 since 2019. Despite that, he’s hit the ground running by outqualifying teammate Kevin Magnussen at each race so far — reaching Q3 on two occasions — and picking up his first points with seventh place in Melbourne.

“That was the whole thing — how can we bring the team forward?” Steiner told RACER. “And Kevin is part of the team. I think it’s a motivation — not only for him (competitively), it’s also he can see that if he cannot find his setup he has got a very experienced teammate to lean on. And that’s what he’s doing.

“He was strong (in Melbourne), maybe not as strong as in Jeddah but he said it himself that in qualifying he made a mistake at Turn 6 on his Q2 lap and it didn’t work out. But he knew where it went wrong and the speed is there from the car and the drivers. If we continue like this there will be a race coming that both of them are getting into the points.

“It’s a very good feeling when you’re sitting there and you know that you can attack, you don’t only have to defend. You know you can attack and go out there to get something; it’s not like hoping that something goes wrong for somebody else — you know that you can do it with your own means.”

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With how regularly Haas is fighting for a top-10 result, Steiner believes the start of the season has shown the team to be close to the front of the chasing group behind Red Bull, Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari.

“We have to reiterate that we didn’t get lucky in a situation, like for example one of the McLarens got — (Oscar Piastri) finished eighth and had a little bit more luck than we had. But we showed in all the races now that we twice went into Q3 pretty dominantly, without luck. Everybody thinks we have to have luck but I think we’ve got the sixth-best car out there, at least. We make the point that we scored points in two of the three races and twice got through to Q3.

“I’m impressed by Nico, how quickly he adapted to the car and to the team, and always tries to get the best out of it. It’s not always possible because there is no midfield anymore, there is the four leaders and then the rest of the pack — there is nobody weak there anymore. We are fighting in there and at the moment we are fighting at the front end of that pack.”

Hulkenberg shaken by ‘nightmare scenario’ in Australian GP

Nico Hulkenberg says he had to escape a “seriously scary” moment in the Australian Grand Prix to pick up the first points of his return with a strong seventh place. Alex Albon crashed on the exit of Turn 6 early in the race, bouncing back onto the …

Nico Hulkenberg says he had to escape a “seriously scary” moment in the Australian Grand Prix to pick up the first points of his return with a strong seventh place.

Alex Albon crashed on the exit of Turn 6 early in the race, bouncing back onto the racing line on the apex of Turn 7 with gravel and dust surrounding his car. Hulkenberg was the second car on the scene after rounding the unsighted corner and admits he was scared by how close to a serious accident he came at the time.

“Holy moly,” Hulkenberg said. “That was seriously scary. I mean, thank God nothing happened but this is a nightmare scenario. You know, you’ve come around the blind corner in a street circuit. All I saw was a cloud of smoke and gravel flying around, and then only last moment I saw his car rolling back onto the track and I missed him not by that much. That could have been a really bad scenario.

“That was seriously scary and sketchy. That’s a bad example of a driver losing the car, crashing and coming back onto the track, and because there’s a gravel trap, there was dust, so you could not really see much.

“I think Pierre (Gasly) was in front of me — he was the first car, I was the second car, and no marshal in the world can react that fast. We didn’t have yellow flags; I just saw the cloud of dust and I saw gravel flying around, so I sort of didn’t take the ideal or normal racing line — I went a bit wider. But I think I still didn’t miss him by much though, I immediately shouted on the radio that we need a safety car.”

After avoiding Albon, Hulkenberg went on to finish seventh with a strong drive that had him in the top 10 throughout the afternoon, and although a protest attempting to revise the classification failed, he says his first points after three years away from full-time Formula 1 competition are a sign of how well he’s working with Haas.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda… I mean, it was wild and a bit messy at times. I think we have to look through how everything happened and what the actions were. It was a lot of things happening; it was very dynamic. I had a super start — I think it was the third time around on softs and came through to P4 actually. A shame that there were a few incidents and they red-flagged it, otherwise it could have been a really strong result.

“But even before that, you know, I think we would have come home in P9 which is obviously not as good as well P7 or P4 or something, but still a lot of positive learnings again, and I take a lot of positives out of this race and forward.

“I feel a lot of good things happening still. I’m refreshed — I’ve got a good mindset, a very positive mindset. I’m feeling hungry — I really enjoy working with the team, exploiting the car, experimenting with the car, and we’ve got a very nice rhythm and momentum. That’s what we want to preserve now and take that into the next couple of races.”

UPDATE: Haas Australian GP protest rejected

Haas has failed with its protest into the race result at the Australian Grand Prix after controversy surrounding a late race restart. Kevin Magnussen’s crash triggered a red flag that left two laps possible after a standing start. The first corner …

Haas has failed with its protest into the race result at the Australian Grand Prix after controversy surrounding a late race restart.

Kevin Magnussen’s crash triggered a red flag that left two laps possible after a standing start. The first corner saw multiple incidents – including crashes for the Alpine drivers and Fernando Alonso being spun to the back before Lance Stroll went off – that led to the race being red-flagged again just three corners later.

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As the cars filtered through the first sector, Nico Hulkenberg was promoted to fourth place behind Carlos Sainz, who would later get a time penalty for hitting Alonso, but the restart order for the cars to roll over the line on the final lap was taken from the previous restart positions, minus those cars that had retired.

That promoted the Aston Martins to third and fourth, with Hulkenberg classified in seventh, but Haas protested the provisional classification in an attempt to get the order taken from the first sector when the German was higher up. Had it been successful, such a change would have impacted multiple drivers and have given Haas the first podium in its history.

The stewards deemed the protest admissible based on the International Sporting Code, as Haas was claiming a breach of the regulation that states “In all cases the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars…” and arguing that “It was possible for the position of all the cars to be determined at the SC2 line not the previous starting grid”.

However, the stewards spoke to race director Neils Wittich and agreed that a decision needed to be made in a timely manner and that GPS data to establish the order of cars in such a situation was unreliable. As a result, the stewards felt the most appropriate point had been selected to determine the order at the time, and dismissed the Haas protest.

That confirmed the race result with Max Verstappen winning from Lewis Hamilton and Alonso, with Lance Stroll classified in fourth ahead of Sergio Perez, Lando Norris and Hulkenberg.