Hulkenberg: Underachiever or wasted talent?

Nico Hulkenberg's tagline might as well be 'the driver with the most Formula 1 starts without a podium finish', so often is that statistic referenced.

Frequently, it's used against him, with his 170 races without cracking the top three proof of his inadequacies as a driver. No wonder Renault dropped him, right?

But it's not as simple as that. Hulkenberg's lack of podium finishes cannot be shrugged off out of hand given he has missed several opportunities through his own mistakes. But such chances have been rare, and he's never been in a car that has been more than an outsider for the top three except in unusual circumstances. His F1 career represents a far wider body of work, much of it very effective.

There are better ways to evaluate Hulkenberg than to judge him by the four occasions his team-mate has finished in the top three and he hasn't. While the days when he was consistently of interest to top teams are behind him, now he's a free agent for 2020 we can be confident he will be on the grid precisely because of the qualities he brings.

But let's interrogate his lack of podiums. He stands as the clear leader of the most starts without a podium stats, 42 ahead of sometime team-mate Adrian Sutil. Among the top 10 are some strong drivers, including the under-rated Pierluigi Martini, Carlos Sainz Jr and Jonathan Palmer - a mighty performer on street circuits in second-rate machinery.

Most starts without a podium

Nico Hulkenberg 170
Adrian Sutil 128
Pierluigi Martini 118
Philippe Alliot 109
Pedro Diniz 98
Marcus Ericsson 97
Ukyo Katayama 94
Carlos Sainz Jr 95
Marc Surer 82
Jonathan Palmer 82

But those numbers mean nothing without context. This is provided by looking at the machinery Hulkenberg has sat in. He's never been in a team ranked in the top three of the constructors' championship at the end of a season.

On paper he looks like the archetypal midfield journeyman, having spent his nine racing seasons in teams ranked from fourth to seventh, although you cannot not use that description in the pejorative sense in Hulkenberg's case as he's more than simply a solid, itinerant performer.

A less well-discussed record is that Hulkenberg has the most race starts without ever driving for a team that has won a race in the season he's there. He is also unique in world championship history as a driver with both a pole position and fastest laps to his name but no podium. Only four times has a team-mate of his finished on the podium in a grand prix, with Sergio Perez getting the result every time.

The driver who never made the podium with the most instances of their team-mate doing so is Satoru Nakajima, whose team-mates (Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet and Jean Alesi) managed 14 podiums across his 74 starts. Hulkenberg is not a driver in anything like that class of underachievement.

After a 2013 season during which he excelled for Sauber, Hulkenberg was a credible contender for two of the top four teams in F1

But he has squandered opportunities, most famously the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix. He led on merit for Force India and, along with Jenson Button, pulled more than 50 seconds on the field thanks to both drivers' brilliance on slicks in the wet before a safety car held them back.

Hulkenberg was subsequently in the thick of the fight for victory, but an optimistic pass for the lead on Lewis Hamilton's McLaren led to contact, a penalty and fifth place.

It was an opportunity lost, a podium finish at worst, but also a virtuoso drive that, without the safety car, might have gone down as one of the great F1 victories.

More recently, he was in the hunt for the podium in the German GP before his off at the final corner prefaced sliding into the wall on the slicked-up drag strip start.

Looking at the opportunities his team-mates have had is illuminating. In Bahrain in 2014, Hulkenberg underachieved in qualifying and despite coming through to fifth and being in the battle for third, he was the less impressive Force India driver. So that has to go down as a missed chance.

Likewise in Russia in 2015, where he outqualified Perez but then slipped behind him at the start before spinning and being collected while trying to make up for it immediately.

But in 2016, Perez nicked a podium that should have been Hulkenberg's as the German lost out to a combination of bad strategy and a slow second pitstop in Monaco. A few races later in Azerbaijan, Hulkenberg was less impressive and blamed a gust of wind for exiting qualifying in the second stage despite having stronger pace than Perez. He then clipped the inside wall and crashed out of the race in one of those needless mistakes that he makes every now and again.

So Hulkenberg has contributed to his own failure. But equally, he lost that Monaco third place through no fault of his own. Similarly he never had the fortune Perez had at Sochi, where Kimi Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas collided on the last lap and allowed the Mexican to jump from fifth to third. Had that happened in any of the 12 races Hulkenberg has finished fourth and fifth in, nobody would talk about his podium record.

Speaking of such results, his fourth place in the 2013 Korean GP was perhaps the best drive of Hulkenberg's career. There, in a slower Sauber, he held off Hamilton and Fernando Alonso at different stages of the race - leading Alonso to describe the performance as "superb". That was the same touch of magic Hulkenberg delivered when he took pole in the wet in a so-so Williams in Brazil in 2010 - setting two laps good enough for top spot.

During his 2013 season, Hulkenberg had a serious shot at a top-team drive. He was close to landing the Ferrari seat that eventually went to Kimi Raikkonen alongside Fernando Alonso in 2014 (the one Pastor Maldonado recently claimed he was also close to). Contracts had been put together but not signed, and ultimately the appeal of Raikkonen as a commercial commodity and his race-winning pedigree led to Hulkenberg missing out.

He might also have ended up at the Lotus-branded Enstone team in 2014 had Eric Boullier's plans for the team not been thwarted by lack of cash. This was at the time when that squad was a race-winning force, and might have continued to be so had it found new investment.

In that alternative reality, this would have left Hulkenberg to take on Romain Grosjean that season in the hope that the team could then lure Alonso for 2015 to partner whoever prevailed. So for 2014, after a season during which he excelled for Sauber, Hulkenberg was a credible contender for two of the top four teams in F1.

So what should we make of Hulkenberg? You can argue that, despite never having finished on the podium, he's among the group of best drivers never to win.

He's unquestionably fast, good in the wet, very handy in battle and rarely makes errors in the wheel-to-wheel stuff despite the occasional unforced mistake when on his own. He is able to adapt to a wide range of car characteristics - and drag lap times out of bad ones. His performance for Porsche in winning Le Mans on his debut alongside Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber in 2015 is testament to his skills and versatility.

But there are weaknesses that mean he falls short of being the complete package. He is not the greatest tyre manager, certainly not compared to a master of controlling rear tyre-slip such as old team-mate Perez.

In that regard, he's unfortunate only to have spent one season racing in F1 on anything other than 21st century Pirellis. Often, mastery of tyre management has been the key to Perez's great drives - something few others can live up to.

He's also struggled up against new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. While some of that can be attributed to the inevitable focus on the shiny new signing and the team galvanising around the Australian, that's also partly because Hulkenberg wasn't quite able to be that gold-standard driver that a team really gets behind. But he's only 0.077s off on average in qualifying and just three points behind - so the deficit isn't enormous.

The fact he isn't necessarily a completely ruthless and focused force in the team is what also helps make him so appealing

Big squads have also questioned his capacity to drive a team forward. Top-level team bosses have privately expressed concerns that he's not the guy to build a team around, meaning that he's often missed out on offers for big seats.

Incidents such as his driving during the farcical final-run out-laps in Q3 at Monza don't help and infuriated some rival team principals. Then, as time goes on, he's typecast as a midfielder and drops off the radar as newer, younger drivers draw their attention having made a good, but not irresistible, case for promotion.

Had Hulkenberg made it into a frontrunning car, there's no question podiums and wins would have followed. Whether he could ever have lived up to his potential as a world champion is a bigger question, and the minor weaknesses, particularly in this era, suggest he might never have moved beyond the second tier. But that's not damning with faint praise, as there are few truly gold-standard drivers.

Another of those weaknesses are the occasional, but regular, mistakes that have cost him over the years. Whether it's a concentration problem or just a capacity for misjudgement, top teams have also clocked this tendency to throw away the odd good result. Most recently, this struck at Hockenheim.

But the fact that he isn't necessarily a completely ruthless and focused force in the team is what also helps make him so appealing.

At 32, he has plenty of years left in him and should be on the grid next year, most likely with Haas, and could still be around in five years' time precisely because he is relatively easy to work with and not too disruptive.

Just look at his conduct after being dropped by Renault, in which he has publicly (and apparently privately) done himself credit. Not continuing with the team was the consequence of many factors, some within his control, some outside of it.

Hulkenberg is also a driver capable of getting a big result when the cards fall the way of the midfield teams. That might seem to go against the historical evidence, but on his day he's as quick as anyone and can deliver outstanding race drives - particularly when tyres aren't a big concern. For that reason, had F1 continued on Bridgestones after his rookie season, things might have been different.

He isn't the perfect F1 driver, but he's still a damned good one. That's why he's been around since 2010 and is likely still to be there at the start of the next decade. But the lack of a podium shouldn't be used as a stick to beat him. Yes, it's a minor indicator of his flaws and there's no doubt he falls short of the all-round game of a Hamilton or Max Verstappen, but it primarily shows he's been unfortunate never to get into a genuinely strong car.

Hulkenberg could yet spring a surprise in the driver market. You could make a case for him being the ideal stop-gap option should Red Bull decide none of Alex Albon, Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly are up to the task in 2020. Easy-going, quick and with a good pre-existing relationship, he'd also score plenty of points and do a good job even if his weaknesses mean he wouldn't usurp Verstappen as team leader.

That would also give us the chance to see how he could do in a top car. If he were to get to the end of his career without getting in a car better than fourth best - and given Haas is by far the most likely 2020 destination, that appears to be the case - it would be a crying shame and make him one of F1's great unanswered questions.