Nico Hulkenberg is confident that Kick Sauber are now a \u201cserious competitor\u201d in the midfield fight, with the team continuing to gain \u201cmomentum\u201d since first introducing significant upgrades back at Round 9 in Spain.<\/p>\n
While Hulkenberg<\/a> ended the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in P7, the squad then suffered a long run without points \u2013 which was brought to an end when the German driver took an impressive P5 in Barcelona.<\/p>\n The team have gone on to claim a top-10 finish at every race since, including a double points result for Hulkenberg and team mate Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a> in Austria before Hulkenberg clinched a stunning P3 one week later at Silverstone, marking his long-awaited first podium<\/a> in F1.<\/p>\n After the race, Hulkenberg was quizzed on how much more might be possible with the C45 car, leading the 37-year-old to joke in response: \u201cYou want even more? Jesus!<\/p>\n \u201cI think that’s pretty good for starters today. If we had a dry race, it would have been a very different day and outcome for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite acknowledging that the changing weather conditions may have played a hand in his result at the British Grand Prix<\/a>, Hulkenberg also praised Kick Sauber<\/a> for continuing to progress across recent races, putting them at the heart of the midfield battle.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst we’ve made some really good improvements since Barcelona<\/a>, today [at Silverstone] is obviously circumstantial, and the conditions made this race and this result possible,\u201d the veteran driver said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I feel in the midfield fight we’ve definitely gained some momentum, and we are a serious competitor there. That’s where our fight is, but it’s always about maximising every race, every weekend, and just trying to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n Hulkenberg\u2019s rostrum at Silverstone has helped Kick Sauber to climb up to P6 in the Teams\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 41 points, putting them just 18 points adrift of Williams<\/a> in P5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nico Hulkenberg is confident that Kick Sauber are now a \u201cserious competitor\u201d in the midfield fight, with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-268024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114865923912324005","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}