Nico Hulkenberg, Renault, Albert Park, 2018

Hulkenberg “had to save a lot of fuel” in Australian GP

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In the round-up: Nico Hulkenberg said he had to work hard on saving fuel at the end of the Australian Grand Prix despite the Safety Car period earlier in the race.

What they’re saying

Hulkenberg said he was satisfied with his seventh place finish after a difficult start in Australia:

I think the race pace was decent today, really decent. Most of the time we couldn’t really show so much because I was in traffic a lot behind other cars so I think we could’ve gone quicker in some places. I’m very happy with the weekend.

Obviously Friday was a really difficult day for me. I wasn’t happy at all but we managed to turn a difficult start into a really good weekend and very satisfying Sunday. P7, six points I think is really rewarding.

We had to save a lot of fuel today. And especially at the end it was getting worse and worse and I didn’t want to lose the DRS train from Max [Verstappen] and Fernando [Alonso] in front. So I was juggling the balls but very happy to score that seventh place.

The Haas, obviously, both fell out of the race which helped us. But then the Safety Car didn’t help us it brought Fernando in front of us [when] I think under normal racing conditions he would definitely finish behind me. So you know that’s racing – lucky on one side, unlucky on the other side. But all in all I’m very happy about the weekend.

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Comment of the day

Dave isn’t sure how good McLaren’s performance was in the first race of 2018:

Somehow I was expecting them to vault up the ranks with the new engine and new chassis. Maybe I bought into Alonso’s hype about how the data show they are so fast in the corners. They really didn’t seem far ahead of where they were.

On the other hand, look at where Toro Rosso is now and maybe that is where McLaren would be too, or a little ahead.
DaveW (@dmw)

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On this day in F1

  • F1’s greatest comeback drive: John Watson won from 22nd on the grid in the championship’s last visit to Long Beach on this day in 1983

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30 comments on “Hulkenberg “had to save a lot of fuel” in Australian GP”

  1. Totally agree with Reagan McKenzie’s tweet. Some folks seem to find any wild conspiracy more believable than the simple truth. If you truly believe that the sole reason for Haas being in Formula 1 is to lick Ferrari’s boot heels, why do you even bother watching?

    1. I could see Sauber doing that for Ferrari. I could see Toro Rosso doing that for Red Bull. But definitely not Haas, since they have demonstrated some balls by saying no to Ferrari on several things, including giving seats to some mediocre drivers from the Ferrari Academy.

      1. @ajpennypacker Are you being sarcastic? Please tell me you are. Of course Ferrari did it. What do you mean with “mediocre drivers”, you mean the Haas line-up. Put Fernando Alonso on the Ferrari replica and he would be quicker in the corners than the McLaren is.

    2. @bullmello I watch because I love soaps. Ferrari remotely locked Grosjean’s wheels so the VSC would be deployed.
      Everyone knows Sirotkin retired because Robert Kubica threw a plastic bag into his rear brake duct. Jacques Villeneuve said Kubica was sabotaging the Williams drivers.

      1. Troll detected.

      2. @peartree Don’t forget McLaren tampering with Gasly’s engine to make it look like Honda are still unreliable!

        1. And home depot providing bad bolts to McLaren

        2. @hugh11 that’s unrealistic. The tampering device would fail first.

  2. Regarding the Motorsport Magazine-article: I’ve always regarded the Marina Bay street circuit as the 2nd toughest circuit to overtake after Monaco, so how is it easier to pass there than around Albert Park?
    – Furthermore, I wholeheartedly agree with Reagan McKenzie’s tweet.

    1. @jerejj Probably because due to the nature of the circuit, you are able to follow a car easier as most corners are medium to low speed.

  3. Should have featured this article in the roundup. To my knowledge, it’s extremely rare for scientific articles on F1 to get published, never mind in a journal as reputable as PNAS. The paper studies what makes any two drivers more or less likely to crash with one another, and finds that it happens more to similarly accomplished drivers, and more often later in the season. Perhaps not that surprising for any avid F1 watcher, but at least to an academic like me who’s also into F1, really, really cool. Congrats to whoever the authors are.

    1. Interesting article. What I could not pick up yet is if they took into account that more ‘equivalent’ racers tend to race close to each other and therefore automatically are more likely to collide. We are not expecting Hamilton to collide very often with Ericsson, simply because they will hardly ever race each other.

      PS All participants of the prediction competition should read it as it helps assessing the risk of 2 specific drivers having a race ending collision. Good luck ;)

      1. Yes, they did try to take this into account by using starting grid positions as a sort of control, using the distance between starting grid positions as a proxy for physical proximity on the racetrack. So of course we wouldn’t expect Hamilton to collide with Ericsson, but according to the study, we also shouldn’t expect Alonso in a McHonda starting alongside Ericsson to collide with him as often as, say Brendon Hartley.

        Which, as @aesto says, is not that surprising to an avid F1 viewer! But a cool study, nonetheless. :)

    2. @aesto Thanks very much for that – I saw an article which mentioned to this report but couldn’t find the original their site, I’ll have a read of it now.

    3. @aesto I was hoping they gonna extend the study to some ‘Escalation of competition into conflict within Formula One organization structure’.

      Which conflict is most likely to arise when a sport was handle with the separate regulator (FIA), commercial organizations (FOM/Liberty) and strategic group consist of privileged members only. Whenever a network gets reshuffled by a newly forced regulation, conflict on promotion, funding, prestige, and other prizes. Just like when they mention about Thomas Edison bullying and slandering Nikola Tesla in the “war of the currents”.

  4. Kind of agree with the cotd. Mclaren were in and about the edge of Q3 for the past 2 seasons. Alonso was running in the points in 2016 and 2017 between P7 and P9, which is about the same as this year before the VSC came out.
    I think the only major difference, as Alonso pointed out was that they can attack during a race instead of having to sit like a duck on the straights.
    I think they’ve made some progress with the engine switch, but not enough with the chassis side to guarantee them the best of the rest status.
    I do think they’ll make progress over the season though, and I think it’s entirely possible that they will be the 4th quickest car by the mid point of the season.
    Renault and Mclaren should have an awesome battle between them though.

    1. @todfod I am not really surprised to see them 6th quickest team. Trailing so badly without any references for years hasn’t done any good. Now they have a clear and observable reference with Red Bull. The pressure Alonso is applying is understandable as they have a lot to catch up.
      Anything below 4th in WCC would be a failure considering McLaren’s resources. At least the car seems to be a good starting point and the engine looks capable of podiums so let’s see how it evolves in the next few races.

  5. Vettel fan 17 (@)
    27th March 2018, 8:07

    So both Hamilton and Hulkenburg had to save fuel? Doesn’t say much good about the rest of the season.

    1. Have the allowed sizes of the fuel tanks increased this year to offset the higher weight (and increased power/speeds)?
      And does anybody know at which tracks the cars are filled up to the brim?

      1. They increased the fuel allowance back in 2017 – however, as you note, there is the question of whether teams really are using the full fuel allowance anyway. I know that, last year, there was talk that some of the Renault powered teams were not using the fuel fuel load allowance, but instead slightly short fuelling (around 3-5 kg below the maximum permitted fuel load) because it was quicker to slightly underfuel and get the driver to save fuel than it was to start with more fuel on board.

    2. Did they both under fuel for the race? We don’t know. F1 from a team view is about engine, chassis and then find a driver to deliver the goods. While Merc perform as they do on the available fuel the other manufacturers have to up their game as they all know it can be done. I think the fuel and engine limitations add to the sport and test the engineers who are in their own world championship.

    3. I think Hamilton said he was ‘saving the engine’ . Which is actually worse. This ridiculous 3 engine rule might save a few bucks for the smaller teams, but it’s going to ruin the quality of racing for sure.

    4. @vettelfan17 Melbourne is one of the hardest tracks for fuel consumption so let’s see how this develops over the next few races before becoming unduly concerned.

  6. Rui (@colinmcrui)
    27th March 2018, 9:36

    I guess Hulk was juggling Kevin’s balls then?

    1. If this doesn’t make it to COTD, this page is rigged

  7. A genuine question, is the ITV article really something that should feature here? I mean, some classmate told here she can’t be a mechanic, it’s not like she’s been refused entry from ‘mechanic school’…

  8. Round up is a better place to put this than a single article:
    I understand the need to try to get people to subscribe to the site, and I understand a link here and there to nudge them towards it.

    But I browse mainly on mobile, and it’s incredibly annoying to have a half page as pop up everytime I open an article begging for subscription. I love the site, but find this very annoying.

  9. That astronaut could use more downforce.

Comments are closed.