British Grand Prix – Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg was impressed by the speed of F1 2017 through Silverstone’s sweeps on Friday, labelling the cars “f**king quick”.
Nico Hulkenberg finished P7 at the end of Friday’s practice, with a best time of 1:29.936 on the SuperSoft tyre. With the Renault not showing any significant pace on the slower Soft tyre, Hulkenberg admitted that the single lap time may be a bit of an anomaly and not truly representative of Renault’s position in the field:
“The one lap was OK. The long runs were a lot more difficult, so I’m not quite sure what to think about our day in the car. We have homework to do and to look into what really happened through the day, and where we are. That one lap looked alright on the timesheets, though!”
“I don’t know what to expect here, and whether to be hopeful or not. I just push on with the car we have and I haven’t really looked into what the others have done. It was a difficult day in terms of the balance and my confidence in the car, so we’ll work on that overnight. The lap was good, and we liked the SuperSoft tyre. We’ve seen that, over one lap, we’re not too bad, and that was the case again today. Even on that one lap, I wasn’t that happy with the balance. It wasn’t that good, and the harmony isn’t there yet. Through any of the corners.”
With F1 coming to the fast sweeps of Silverstone for the first time since the regulation changes to improve cornering speeds, downforce and power, Hulkenberg was impressed by the speed of 2017-spec F1 cars around the circuit. He said:
“I’ll tell you what, the cars are f**king fast through the corners here. Copse, Maggotts, Becketts, Chapel…they’re impressively fast and it’s a lot of G (forces) on the body. It’s going to be a physical race. Physically, this is going to be tougher (than previous years).”
