“Then everyone is an opponent”: Hulkenberg shows no sympathy for Schumacher

“Then everyone is an opponent”
Hulkenberg shows no sympathy for Schumacher

Nico Hülkenberg replaces Mick Schumacher in the Haas Formula 1 team. This makes the 35-year-old the only German pilot in the field. The Formula 1 veteran on RTL/ntv explains why that hardly matters to him and why he has little contact with Mick Schumacher.

The time as a firefighter is over. Since the end of 2019, when his involvement with Renault ended, Nico Hülkenberg was in demand as a jumper, but was no longer a regular. First fireman for Racing Point, later for the successor team Aston Martin and Mercedes. And the all-rounder delivered, jumped spontaneously several times into a working device that he hardly knew, sometimes on routes he had never driven before, for example in Saudi Arabia in early 2022. In 2020, in his actual role as an RTL expert, he received a call while drinking coffee asking him to please replace the sick Lance Stroll. Hülkenberg, in his element, was immediately convincing. Almost as if he had never been away.

History shows that Hülkenberg is one thing above all: a professional. A professional who took a backseat for three years, doing his job rather quietly in the background and still maintaining the best contacts because he often appeared on the Formula 1 circuits as a substitute. For example to Günther Steiner. The polarizing Haas team principal decided to make a switch in his second cockpit late this year. Hulkenberg instead of Schumacher. experience rather than youth.

The change had been hinted at in the weeks before, but still caused a bang in Germany. According to Haas, Schumacher scored too little and caused high costs with a few crashes. “We had to carry Mick,” Steiner said afterwards. Hülkenberg was ready, but he did not maintain a direct exchange with Schumacher during this time, as he reveals in the RTL / ntv interview. “We haven’t talked to each other since then. We never really exchanged ideas before that,” says Hulkenberg.

The only German driver in Formula 1

Of course you chat at the drivers’ parade because you speak the same language. “Mick is also a different generation. We never had a real relationship, something like he has with Sebastian (Vettel, ed.). The story is what it is now. If it hadn’t been me, maybe it would be been someone else.”

Hard words. Apparently, above all, however, honest words. Because in the premier class of motorsport, the principle of performance reigns supreme. At least for the drivers who don’t bring millions to the team. “In F1 it’s all about performance. If you’re convincing and perform, you have a job, you’re a hot stock. If you don’t perform, it’s over very quickly,” analyzes the new Haas driver.

Hulkenberg was such a hot stock on the 2022 driver market. And now the last German one. Hard to believe: The 35-year-old Haas driver is now the only German driver in Formula 1. For the first time since 1993, only one German is represented. At that time, Michael Schumacher was alone before Heinz-Harald Frentzen joined him the following year. The big boom in Germany is over. No more Michael Schumacher, no Sebastian Vettel, no Nico Rosberg, no Germany race for the foreseeable future.

But Nico Hülkenberg, who holds up the flag. It doesn’t matter too much to him. It’s not so relevant “how many drivers from your country are at the start,” he says. Only one thing counts: “If you stand in the grid, the visor goes down, then everyone is an opponent.”

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