Nico Hulkenberg says since the updates that Haas brought should have been a fix but they were mostly at par with their old spec.
Haas’ Hulkenberg was quite vocal about the updates situation that the team brought about in Austin. After couple of races, the German opted to go for the old spec as he didn’t find the step he was looking for, while Kevin Magnussen continued with the new one.
There was downforce difference certainly but as per Hulkenberg, it wasn’t the step up but more or less on par situation. “I don’t think there is a huge difference between them, minor differences,” said Hulkenberg to media. “In Las Vegas, I felt actually the new package had an edge over the old package on a low downforce configuration.
“In Abu Dhabi, I felt quite okay, Kevin didn’t feel so happy. They are so similar, but that’s in itself obviously not good enough. An update is supposed to be better and fix some of your issues and unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I don’t know if it proved anything. We need to work hard because I want us to do better, we need to pick up our feet, do a better job.
“The signs were there early in the season, and we got away with it earlier in the season because other people also were struggling. Once they cleaned up and brought some real developments, that’s when we really started to pay the penalty. The second half of the season has been really tough, there was only an opportunity to score a point or two for me in Singapore, which we missed by the wrong strategy call.
“Apart from that we just never had the pace to do it, even when there was a lot of cars dropping out we were just too far away from it. Of course that’s not great and that’s why we need to be better,” summed up Hulkenberg, who early on felt that Haas were on the right trajectory seeing how the car was behaving at least on one lap side.
But as it started to become clear that the race pace wasn’t there due to high tyre degradation, Hulkenberg was resigned to the fact that it will be a long season and he eventually got used to the situation where expectations were low overall.
“I think the first half was difficult because you still had hope and you were trying things to make it work,” said Hulkenberg. “The second half it was kind of set and given, it was kind of pre-set and pre-programmed what’s going to happen. Some tracks were worse, some tracks better depending on temperature and compound, and all these variables.
“In the first half after qualifying, obviously the expectations rise, you get all the questions from media and everyone is patting your shoulder but I knew that Sundays are about to get tough. It wasn’t easy but I guess in a way I got used to it as the year went by and you try to do the best with what you have,” summed up Hulkenberg.
Here’s Guenther Steiner explaining on lack of updates
Here’s Guenther Steiner on CBS programme
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