The highs and lows of being F1's latest supersub

On the Thursday morning of the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix weekend Nico Hulkenberg was sitting at home in Monaco when his mobile phone buzzed into life. It was new Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack with a simple message – Sebastian Vettel has COVID-19 and we need you here, right now.

It was the start of a hectic 11-day adventure for Hulkenberg, who would add two more GP starts as a reserve driver to the two he logged in 2020, further extending an F1 career that began with Williams back in 2010.

The usual procedure for Hulkenberg is that for flyaway races he is on site, and in Europe he can wait at home and jump on a plane if needed. The Aston Martin race team thought he was scheduled to be in Bahrain, but another department had inadvertently cancelled his trip.

He thus had three hours to pack and say his goodbyes to wife Egle and nine-month-old daughter Noemi Sky, before flying from Nice to Amsterdam and then on to Bahrain, arriving after midnight. He had some homework to do on the trip.

“The team gave me a whole presentation from testing,” he explains. “About the driver comparisons, some data to look at, the strategy preview, the team's expectation basically about the weekend and the tyres. So on the flight over I had a good read through.

“However, there's only so much you can do in theory. Ultimately you have to get in the car and you have to feel it, and learn it, to progress.”

The priority on Friday was to get him comfortable in the AMR22. He’d done a winter seat fitting in a chassis mock-up, but some work was required to hone his final seat. Then it was in at the deep end in FP1 with a car he didn’t know.

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“My strategy was to focus on the basics,” says the 34-year-old. “I wasn't spending time around set-up, or control switches, or optimising the diff so much, it was just about getting the basics right, getting the feel with the car, my inputs, the braking, all that stuff. It's an overload of information and generally of work. So it was, ‘Let's filter only the important stuff for me right now’.”

He finished FP2 just shy of team-mate Lance Stroll, who had made a mistake on his quick lap. It was a solid first day: “Obviously overnight you subconsciously just process everything and the feeling grows, and you come back Saturday morning with a much better starting point.

“To be honest, the cars are different, but then they're not at the same time. Yes, they're a bit heavier, and in the low and medium speed, it's a little bit more sluggish, and you feel the weight pressing there a bit.

“They're very stiff, the suspension is very minimal. That's kind of the most obvious difference when I jumped in. Other than that, it's still very much an F1 car, and the feeling hasn't changed a great deal.”

"I think I'm quite good at exploiting a new tyre and feeling where the grip is, and then just using that and driving to that" Nico Hulkenberg

He qualified 17th, ahead of not only Stroll but also McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo. You might think that, after two days in the car, the actual race would then be easier, given the slower pace and the extra time to adjust, but Hulkenberg disagrees.

“It's the opposite for me,” he says. “The quali and the Friday and the Saturday bit is the easier part, because you more or less spend all the time on new or fresh tyres. So you don't really get to exploit the car how on really old worn tyres, you don't have the fuel changes so much.

“The quali stuff, actually it's always been kind of my speciality, even in junior series. I think I'm quite good at exploiting a new tyre and feeling where the grip is, and then just using that and driving to that. And I really like that, and it comes natural for me.

“And then the race obviously when you're a lot more grip limited, because the tyre is not new anymore, things become more tricky, especially if you haven't had much time in an F1 car recently. And on top of that, the car we have is difficult to drive, so it was very tough and difficult.”

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin AMR22, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR22, Guanyu Zhou, Alfa Romeo C42

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

And then it was into the race itself, and Hulkenberg’s first start since the 2020 Eifel GP.

“The race is always the most difficult part of the weekend,” he admits. “Especially given that I hadn't raced for two years, I hadn't spent much time with this car at high fuel.

“Sunday was much, much more difficult, because the fuel is coming down, the balance is changing, you're racing cars, so many things happening, so many moving parts. It was always clear that Sunday would be the most difficult.

“I didn't overthink, I just said I've done this many times, the cars have changed slightly but the basics and the principles, they're all the same. It's wasn't too dissimilar to 2020 and all the years before that.

“Lap one is obviously interesting, the knives are out. But it's cool, it's competition time and you race, you fight. And I think even made two positions on lap one. And it was going OK, but we had some problems with overheating, so we needed to lift and coast, and drive offset quite a lot.

“I was trying to overtake [Mick] Schumacher and outbraked myself, I ran wide in the dirt, and I lost a bit the rhythm. Soon after that the lapping events happened, so it was very quickly into a downward spiral. I think the pace once I was on my own was actually pretty good. But circumstances went against me quite early.”

Having finished 17th Hulkenberg flew to London on Sunday night and, after a day to catch his breath, he was in the Aston simulator on Tuesday learning Jeddah. He then waited for news on Vettel, and was eventually told that he’d be racing once more.

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

He flew on Wednesday evening via Dubai, arriving in Jeddah on Thursday morning. This time he could take part in engineering meetings and do an evening track walk. However, he soon found that the sim hadn’t provided adequate preparation.

"I had that weekend in the bag in Bahrain, but then coming to this intense and crazy track as a sub, it was pretty unforgiving and tough,” he says. “Despite having simulator prep, it was actually a big challenge.

“On Friday I didn't feel so confident and comfortable in the car, and even Saturday I was not where I would like to be.”

"From all the situations or scenarios you can think of, it's actually the best one that I got to do race one" Nico Hulkenberg

From 17th on the grid Hulkenberg started on the hard tyre, which made life tricky in the early laps. By staying out under the safety car he jumped up the order, albeit knowing that others had taken free stops.

“The race was actually the best feeling I had all weekend,” says the German, who finished 12th. “I think it was clean, it was faultless.

“Unfortunately the safety car went really against my strategy, so that really compromised me. I had a lot of stoppers with fresh tyres behind, and I couldn't hold them, I didn't even want to hold them. I had to manage my tyres, because I was going long. But the car was more enjoyable than in Bahrain.”

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

The whole experience flew by: “Very eventful, intense days. A lot of travelling, so much coming at you. I need a few weeks to process everything, and to digest it all. But I think in a few months when I look back at this time, it's good memories, good times.

“And being back in the competition, in the heat of a fight, feeling the rush and the adrenaline of quali, of lap one, it's been fun and cool.

“From all the situations or scenarios you can think of, it's actually the best one that I got to do race one. The others had testing, but they didn't have multiple races already. If I would have been called into the seat halfway down the season, then it would have been really even more difficult, because these guys don't have such a head start.

“I was out for a few years, but they didn't have multiple races in these cars yet. So that was actually a bit on the favour side.”

With two races in the bag there is nobody outside the regular entry list with as much experience of the 2022 cars and tyres as Hulkenberg. Is there a chance that another team, even one with its own designated reserve, might call on him in an emergency, or even if a driver is suddenly needed on a more permanent basis?

“I guess we would have to talk about it,” he says. “Obviously I am contractually bound to Aston Martin. If it was their direct competitor and down the year somewhere they're fighting in the constructors’ championship over a position, I don't think Aston will be too keen to release me! But I guess it will depend a little bit on the circumstances and the situation.

“And don't imagine it's easy to jump into a new car, even once. Every car has a different characteristic, different style. It would be really tough, actually.

“However there are not many people with the history and experience that I have and are still around so much, or that race elsewhere, so there are not so many alternatives. There are a lot of young guys in F2, a lot of talent around there. But obviously they don't have F1 experience yet.”

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

So what’s next for Hulkenberg? He sampled and rejected IndyCar with a McLaren test last year, and currently he has no other racing programme lined up.

"The future is here,” he says. “I will stay as reserve driver for Aston, and I'm doing my stuff for ServusTV. And then beyond that, to be honest, I don't have the answer. I don't know myself. But that's OK. I'm in a totally good headspace. And I'm totally fine with that, it's not a pressing issue.

“I need to find something in racing that I really want to do. That hasn't come around yet. And it might do in the next months, I don't know. But I'm totally relaxed and open about it.

“I had many, many good years of racing. If there's more to come, great. But it's not like my life stops without it."

Nico Hulkenberg, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images