The Observer

Nico Hulkenberg looked pretty glum as he sat in the press conference in Shanghai last weekend. You wouldn't have guessed he'd just won a championship for his country.

The A1GP World Cup of Motorsport was won by France in its first season. Now Team Germany has succeeded the French, and in a similarly dominant fashion.

But Nico wasn't happy. He'd only won the title with a pair of third places rather than the pair of wins we've come to expect in the past few months.

"I know I can't always win because that is impossible," he said to explain his dissatisfaction. But he didn't sound convincing.

Hulkenberg is the kind of talent that thinks absolutely that he should win every time - and that's part of why he is tipped for a bright future.

Nico Hulkenberg after the Shanghai race © XPB/LAT

Hulkenberg has been the star of the second season of this unique series and is on the right course to become A1GP's first graduate to reach Formula One. The style of some of his performances this year has made him stand out as something special.

But there are some doubters out there. Sure, he's mastered the big, heavy 520bhp Lola, but he has been with the right team to give him the set-up to do so.

And will he be able to make the same impression in the Formula Three Euroseries this year? He did little in his first F3 season last year. The Euroseries kicks off this weekend at Hockenheim, so those doubters will begin to get some answers.

At Shanghai last weekend he openly admitted that having missed a round to test for his new F3 team, he was struggling to adapt back to the big A1GP car. It bothered him that he didn't really understand why he wasn't the quickest.

Now, he's not the first one to be confused by these cars. Any driver with experience of the modern, high-downforce GP2 and World Series cars will tell you how different the A1GP Lola is to drive. You have to change your style completely to get the best out of it, which is why so many big-name drivers have failed to live up to their reputations in the series.

But would Lewis Hamilton struggle to adapt from one car to another, no matter how different they are? We don't know, but from the recent evidence of just how good he is, we can have a pretty good idea. He is the new yardstick for every aspiring F1 driver now.

It's always hard to assess just how good young drivers are before they get to F1. You get a pretty good idea - Hamilton, for example, was a fair bet to be as good as he looked in F3 and GP2. But until he actually sat in a McLaren at a Grand Prix we couldn't be absolutely certain - even with him.

In Hulkenberg's case, what we can be sure of is that he will get a chance to show us what he has got in an F1 car one day in the future. His manager will see to that.

Willi Weber, the man who guided Michael Schumacher through his incredible career, is starting all over again with another kid. He is the seat holder of A1GP Team Germany and is using the series partly as a breeding ground for talent. Hulkenberg isn't the only one to have impressed in the German car this year - Christian Vietoris has shown speed, too.

Robbie Kerr (Team GB) exits the pits © XPB/LAT

Weber is a master of management. I asked Nico at the weekend what it is like to drive for him. "He doesn't put pressure on me," he said. "He is very calm and very supportive. He doesn't get involved in details with the car, which is good. He leaves that to the team."

In Weber, Schumacher had someone in whom he could place absolute trust, who had unswerving belief in him. He'll give exactly the same commitment to Nico - although having said that, he wasn't in China to see his team clinch the title!

Well, I can't blame him for that. The Shanghai circuit is a monumentally impressive place thanks to the huge scale of everything, but it's also soulless.

The benchmark for the world's race circuits is built in a barren area about three quarters of an hour out of the city. All around the circuit new buildings and constructions are growing out of the ground, including the magnetic rail link which will eventually carry people from the airport to the city to the circuit at 350kph.

While everything is shiny and new within the circuit, outside the real China rumbles on. The streets teem with cars and trucks, their drivers constantly honking their horns, often for little rhyme or reason. My two-hour cab journey from the airport to my hotel in heavy rush hour traffic last weekend brought back memories of Popye Doyle's driving in The French Connection when he's chasing that overhead train.

Push bikes and motorised scooters of all description weave around the roads, their riders taking little notice of the cars and trucks that refuse to lift when they cross paths. It's mayhem.

But you see some great sights. One chap had strapped a five-foot high refrigerator to the side of his push bike. To counter the considerable weight he had to lean about 30 degrees the other way to pedal in a straight line. No one else seemed to take any notice. Nothing out of the ordinary, it seems.

The streets between my hotel and the track did not suggest great wealth, even if the building sites suggest plenty of local investment. The countless small shops sell all sorts of bric-a-brac, some of it new and some of it very second-hand.

The people look serious, almost aggressive. They rarely smile, probably because they don't have much to smile about. They are very polite to westerners, but to each other they always seem to shout and argue.

Mechanics haggle with a local salesman © LAT

But most of the time I forgot I was in a communist country. China has embraced capitalist commercialism and the old image of everyone dressed in Maoist suits is no longer a reality - at least from what I saw.

But this country remains so alien to Europeans. My visit lasted little more than four days and I left feeling baffled, tired and irritable. It was not enough time to get to grips with this vast, fascinating country.

There were a few occasions where the two worlds I saw in China did collide. In the paddock, sellers from the streets didn't seem to need passes. As mechanics worked on the cars, they were offered fake designer watches for just a few quid. Most were more than happy to buy them.

Meanwhile, the women bought fake designer handbags in bulk. There was also a craze for fold-up bikes, which could be bought out on the streets for about £20. A bargain.

A certain photographer and two PRs snapped them up, leaving them with a team to freight back to the UK. They can't wait to use them for the final A1 round at Brands Hatch on April 29. So if you go to the race and spot anyone on fold-up bikes, you'll know they've travelled a long way!

I can't imagine Bernie allowing watch and handbag sellers into the paddock when F1 visits Shanghai later this year. A1GP has a rather more relaxed atmosphere, which is why everyone involved finds it so much fun.

Hulkenberg didn't find it much fun on Sunday though. Third place behind New Zealand's Jonny Reid and Great Britain's Robbie Kerr was not what he came to China for, even if he left with a championship in his pocket.

Like me, I suspect, he left feeling baffled, tired and irritated - but for very different reasons.