Renault delivered one of the best qualifying performances in recent years in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Nico Hulkenberg set to start the race from seventh on the grid and teammate Jolyon Palmer starting tenth.
Hulkenberg believes his effort ranks up there with the one and only pole position he scored for the 2010 Brazilian Grand Prix.
“This was seriously, together with the lap from Brazil in 2010, my best quali lap in my career. Especially around here, which I always found a track where I used to struggle in qualifying before to hook it all up perfectly but today it went smooth as silk. It was beautiful. A great lap.”
“I’m happy, I’m positive from that respect. I think already yesterday we saw that one lap pace, the car has one lap pace. It’s like naturally there. I think that’s probably our strong point at the moment. So that’s pretty good, positive.
“Long run pace and tyre management, we will obviously find that out tomorrow. In Shanghai we were struggling a bit but yesterday we got some good long runs in. We tried to work against it a bit in Shanghai, made some changes. I hope that it’s better in the race, which will be a true test.”
Hulkenberg reveals that he suspected there was something special in the RS17, “I felt since winter testing it was there. In winter testing in Barcelona we did a sub-1m20 seconds lap time with not crazy low fuel and under good normal circumstances, not underweight, so from the beginning the car was good with that.”
“We always see that the gaps in qualifying are surprisingly close but then in the race suddenly it is like a second or something. In a race, when the tyre is not good anymore after 10 laps, the real difference comes out much bigger.”
“I don’t think we can compete with the likes of Red Bull and everybody. I think even Williams in the race, they look pretty strong. Let’s see what we can do,” added the German who is still waiting to score his first podium in Formula 1.
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