TIL #85: Honor is Due
Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber achieve the impossible
The Installation Lap is a weekly Substack column dedicated to helping Americans develop a deeper appreciation for Formula 1.
In 2009, Nico Hulkenberg was racing in GP2 and had been signed as a reserve driver for the AT&T Williams F1 team. He won the GP2 title that year, and in 2010, his rookie season in F1, 23-year-old Nico Hulkenberg was most commonly referred to as “Future World Champion,” such was the belief in his talent.
The Williams in 2010 was then, as it is now, not a particularly fast car. And while Nico’s rookie season was what you might imagine for an F1 rookie, plenty of finishes in the teens, Nico did manage to grab a spectacular, wet-weather pole position in the Brazilian Grand Prix, race 18 of 19 that season.
A dry race saw the lowly Williams gobbled up at the start. Still, Nico finished a respectable P8 in that Grand Prix—his seventh top-ten finish of that season. Life was good, and Nico’s career in Formula 1 was all ahead of him.
Unfortunately, Nico ended up having the career that F1 drivers have nightmares about. Nico would spend the next 15 years driving around in some of the worst cars on the F1 grid. In 2011, he moved to Force India. Then to perennial backmarkers Sauber in 2013. Then, it was back to Force India for three years before joining Renault. After three years of mediocre results with a works team, Nico left Renault and returned to his old Force India Team, which at this point in 2020 was now called BWT Racing Point. At the end of that 2020 season, Racing Point dropped Hulkenberg, and he was out of F1.
After two super-sub performances in the pandemic-stricken 2020 season, where Nico was called up to race on short notice and scored points in both those races (the British Grand Prix and the Eifel Grand Prix), poor old Nico spent 2021 outside of F1 looking in.
In 2022, Nico got the call once again and returned to F1 with his old Force India team, only this time as a reserve driver. Force India, after being purchased by Lawrence Stroll, spent two years as BWT Racing Point and, by 2022, had transitioned into Aston Martin. Nico raced in that shopping trolley of a car for just two races in 2022 before moving to Haas for two years before landing back at Sauber for the 2025 season.
That 15-year journey through the bowels of F1 saw Nico start 239 Grand Prix. After Nico’s 129th Grand Prix, he became the holder of a dubious F1 record —most Grand Prix starts without a podium. That record had previously been held by Adrian Sutil (128 Grand Prix). Who is Adrian Sutil, you ask? Exactly. Doomed to obscurity.
Nico’s talent and abilities were clear to everyone. He was and is widely respected up and down the grid. Unfortunately for Nico, he has never been respected enough to land a top drive in a fast car.
Last year, when Nico Hulkenberg signed with Sauber and became Audi’s first Formula 1 driver for the legendary manufacturer’s arrival on the grid in 2026, many in F1 circles thought this could be a chance for Nico to finally grab that long-deserved podium. Perhaps, the thinking went, Audi would be capable of building a car that would enable Nico to reach the sharp end of the field. This is how fanciful the wishing and hoping around Nico and that elusive first podium had become. His “best chance” was for a new manufacturer to enter the sport and magically build Nico, the kind of car he’d never had access to in 15 years of Grand Prix racing.
TIL has written endlessly about the quirks of Formula 1 as a top global sport. Due to the cars, the technology, the nature of motor racing, and the subjectivity that the enforcement of rules allows for, F1 has never been fair in the same way that other major sports have been fair. In ball-based sports like tennis, baseball, basketball, and football, the rules have been set and known for generations. There is very little mystery or room for interpretation. In fact, the biggest limiting factor for fairness in those other sports was, for many years, the human eye. Slow-motion replay cameras and 3D modeling technology have allowed for the quality of refereeing in major sports leagues to reach levels of equity no one had dared dream of. F1 has never been like those other sports. Each team builds its own car, and the cars are never equal. Slow-motion replays and technology have often served only to highlight the cracks and human subjectivity that live within F1’s rules. Oscar Piastri’s penalty in Sunday’s British Grand Prix is another reminder of this dynamic. At another race, with a different set of stewards, Oscar may or may not have received a penalty. If he had, that penalty may or may not have been more or less harsh than the ten-second penalty he received. That is frustrating. That is F1.
The DNA level unfairness of Formula 1 does have a flip side to it. F1 can deliver glory in mind-boggling ways. And Nico Hulkenberg’s drive to third place in Sunday’s British Grand Prix is a prime example of that. Every once in a while, the little guy gets to stand in the sun and drink champagne.
An insane, wet-dry-wet race that saw crashes, cars sliding all over the place, virtual safety cars, and full safety cars delivered Nico Hulkenberg and Sauber one glorious result. A result that the little Swedish team could not have dreamt of at any other point in the weekend or, indeed, at any point in the last decade. Not only was this Nico Hulkenberg’s first podium, but it was Sauber’s first podium since 2012!
This, dear reader, is the kind of high that Formula 1, at its very best, can deliver. What a beautiful and much-deserved result for both Nico and Sauber.
Nico’s podium on Sunday is made all the more spectacular when you dig into the counterfactual. It was Nico’s calls from the cockpit that laid the groundwork for this long-awaited podium.
Rewatching the onboard footage from the opening stint of the race, I found that Nico’s race engineer, Steven Petrik, called Nico into the pits twice during the opening laps of the race. Nico refused the first call and was already passing the pit entry when the second call came over the radio. Then, on lap 10, with Petrik telling Nico to stay out, Nico dives into the pits.
Nico: “Tell me, what I do.”
Petrik: “And, stay out, stay out.”
Nico: “Well, I can’t. These tires are fucked…Box, I’m coming in to box.”
Nico’s first podium after 239 Grand Prix was made possible by the calls Nico made from the cockpit. Brilliant.
Sauber Team Principal, Jonathan Wheatley, said after the race,
“Where do I start… The most overdue podium in F1 history and the first podium for the team since Japan in 2012," said Wheatley after the race.
"This was a weekend of highs and lows but, ultimately, we pulled it all together and when the opportunity was there, we grabbed it with both hands.” —Jonathan Wheatley to Formula1.com
With that result, Sauber has jumped to sixth in the constructors’ standings with 41 points. 18 points behind Williams and 5 points ahead of both Racing Bulls and Aston Martin. If you want to see what it means to a team like Sauber to get a result like this, just take a look at their post-race social media feeds. It is rare to see such unadulterated joy in the F1 paddock.
F1, for all its flaws and quirks, can deliver something magical just when you least expect it. Bravo to Nico and Sauber. What a brilliant result.
While Nico Hulkenberg will continue to hold the record for most grand prix without a podium, the counter on that record has now stopped and will be frozen at 239. To look at that list now is to stare into a bizarro history of F1. Hardly any of the names sound familiar. The vast majority of these drivers have disappeared into the maw of F1 history. Number 3, Pierluigi Martini (118 Grand Prix without a podium), is a name I’d never heard before. The same applies to number 4, Philippe Alliot (109). In fact, there are only two active Formula 1 drivers on this all-time list. One is, of course, Nico Hulkenberg. The other?
Great job by Nico !! Everyone is happy for him and the team !
Incredible moment for the Hulk! Really enjoyed his time with Haas. So happy for him, what a moment!
Martini was with Minardi, the charming back markers of the 80s and 90s. Was notorious for ignoring blue flags, he said if they're so much faster then they can overtake me, I'm driving my race.
F1 is delivering an amazing year and good timing, Palou has gone full Verstappen 2023 in IndyCar.