Audi is not experiencing a perfect start to the season: The team was only able to start with one car in Australia and China – Nico Hülkenberg admits that this is “painful”
Audi has had a mixed start to the new Formula 1 era so far: although Gabriel Bortoleto scored the first points in the season opener in Melbourne, one of the R26 cars from Ingolstadt was unable to start the race on Sunday in both Australia and China.
“It’s never nice,” admits Nico Hülkenberg before this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix (full schedule). The German was forced to watch the race at Albert Park due to technical problems. “Nobody wants that, nobody deserves that. It’s also painful, but what’s done is done.“
”We can only influence the future, what lies ahead of us. So let’s concentrate on our goal and go full throttle,” says the Audi driver. When asked whether the initial problems have now been resolved, the German remains cautious.
“Fixing them is not always easy and sometimes not particularly quick either,” says Hülkenberg. “What’s more, different things keep cropping up. So it’s an ongoing process that we are constantly working on. But in Neuburg, they are really on it, very attentive, responsive and committed.”
Nico Hülkenberg: “Definitely competitive in the midfield”
This is “really impressive”, says the German, without committing himself to a clear statement as to whether the team has now found a definitive solution to the technical difficulties. “There is still a lot of work ahead of us, as always.”
After all, the first two races have shown that Audi is “definitely competitive in the midfield”. “We have seen a few examples of this in the meantime,” recalls the 38-year-old, who nevertheless sees a need for further action – particularly “in terms of reliability, the drive unit, performance and driveability.”
“To be honest, that was to be expected,” says Hülkenberg, pointing out that Audi is a new manufacturer with its own drive unit and does not supply another customer team. “That’s why a lot of things probably take a little longer than when you have four or six cars available.”
Hülkenberg convinced: Audi “still has a lot of potential”
“All in all, we are not in a bad position considering where we are and the difficulties we are currently facing,” summarized the Audi driver. “That gives me confidence that we still have a lot of potential if we can get our problems under control and make strong progress this year.”
But the competition is also likely to make further progress in the coming weeks. “If you look through the pit lane, you can see that many cars and teams are struggling with problems,” says Hülkenberg, who knows that Audi is not an isolated case.
The fact that the Ingolstadt team was only able to field one car in each of the first two races of the new season in Australia and China is all the more serious, as the track time and experience lost compared to the competition is difficult to make up for.
