While Vettel wins, Nico Hulkenberg faces uncertain F1 future

And so the Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull steam-roller marches on. Race after race, it’s the same story. Vettel’s win in Korea was his eighth of the season and fourth in a row and, with five races still to go, the German is now on the cusp of becoming only the third man in the history of the sport to claim four straight world titles. He could be champion as early as this weekend in Suzuka provided he wins and Fernando Alonso, now 77 points behind but still Vettel’s closest challenger in the standings, does no better than ninth. But even as Vettel stands on the brink of adding to his already impressive tally of world titles, and as remarkable as the achievement is, spare a thought for another promising German, Nico Hulkenberg – without a doubt the star of Sunday’s race – who is at risk of falling off the Formula One map altogether. I feel for Nico, I really do. He has done everything he needs to secure a top drive but somehow always seems to draw the short straw. [caption id=“attachment_1159869” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg at the Italian Grand Prix. Reuters[/caption] After a promising junior career, Hulkenberg made his Formula One debut in 2010 with Williams. He put in impressive performances that year, most notably in qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix, when he read the treacherous conditions perfectly to put his car on pole with a superlative lap on a damp track. However, at the end of the year, he was inexplicably dropped by the former world champions in favour of the cash-rich Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado who delivered bagfuls of petro-dollars to the team in the form of sponsorship from state-owned oil company PDVSA. As a result, Hulkenberg was relegated to the sidelines, spending a year as Force India’s reserve driver. A second opportunity came knocking when Force India promoted him to a full-time race seat in place of compatriot Adrian Sutil. Once more he impressed, and was on course to win his and Force India’s maiden race at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix – again in the wet – until a move on Lewis Hamilton for the lead ended in tears, with the McLaren driver being forced to retire though Hulkenberg still came home a strong fifth. There is a rule of thumb in Formula One that the best drivers generally shine in the wet, all the more so in uncompetitive machinery, with the rain acting as a leveller and driver confidence, the ability to feel the car, tease the grip from the greasy track surface, and supreme car control at a premium. Ayrton Senna shone in the wet on numerous occasions, most notably at Monaco in 1984 and Donington Park in 1993; Michael Schumacher, too, left rivals floundering in his wake to win the Spanish Grand Prix by a country mile in 1996. And here was Hulkenberg doing the same at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2012. Sure, he made a mistake that ended his hopes of victory but the talent was plain for all to see. He was linked to Ferrari that year, rumoured to be one of the drivers in the running to replace the struggling Felipe Massa. But Ferrari gave Massa a stay of execution and the call never came. Instead, Hulkenberg chose to move to Sauber and though it was admittedly a sideways move, from one midfield team to another, there was logic behind it. Force India had had a strong 2012, but Sauber had scored four podiums over the course of the year. There was no reason why Sauber wouldn’t have been able to repeat that form this year, given the stability of the rules, and so wanting the chance to fight for podiums, Hulkenberg jumped ship. There was also the Ferrari connection – Formula One’s glamour team have tended to use engine customers Sauber effectively as their B-Team for a while now and as a result, Hulkenberg would have been ideally placed to move up to the Maranello-based squad if Massa failed to turn around his sub-par form. Hulkenberg once again drew the short straw, however, as Sauber’s car this year has largely been woefully uncompetitive. A resource crunch at the Hinwil-based squad has made matters worse as – despite having figured out what was wrong with their 2013 challenger – the team were unable to bring upgrades to fix the problem for most of the season. Only recently, with money from a new deal with a group of Russian investors starting to flow in, have things started getting better, the car showing a marked improvement in form that has been reflected in the results. Typically, Hulkenberg has turned adversity into opportunity, qualifying a headline-grabbing third at the Italian Grand Prix. Hulkenberg’s timing was impeccable as Ferrari, at that point, were in the final stages of deciding their driver line-up for next year. In fact, Hulkenberg already had a contract from the team on the table, only for them to then reach an agreement – reported to have been struck on the Sunday night/Monday morning following the Italian Grand Prix – with Kimi Raikkonen. Denied a drive with a top team yet again, Hulkenberg’s best shot at moving up the grid now is with the Lotus squad as a replacement for Kimi Raikkonen. But the silliness of Formula One’s regulations could see the 26-year-old struggle to find a seat anywhere on the grid let alone with a front-running squad, simply because he is taller and heavier than some of his peers. There is a certain prescribed weight limit that every car-driver combination has to meet and teams always work towards getting the weight of their car and driver combined down to the absolute minimum as running heavier comes at the cost of vital laptime. The minimum weight has been raised for next year but most of that increase is expected to be taken up by the new turbo power units. As a result, with the new engines expected to be heavier than earlier thought, driver weight could well make the difference between meeting the absolute minimum weight or going over it and paying the price with slower laptimes, making drivers like Hulkenberg less attractive to teams. “… The way it has worked out means the heavier drivers will be less attractive. It has happened by accident. We have raised the minimum weight but the new powertrains are heavier than people expected and now have a situation where heavier drivers could be a disadvantage,” McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh told Sky Sports News in Korea. “We have to find a solution, but I doubt we will find one in the next few weeks or months.” Formula One teams are competitive beasts who can’t put anything ahead of their own self-interest. Teams with lighter drivers must surely sense an advantage here but clearly, if the new rules are going to marginalise talented drivers like Hulkenberg then they need to sit down and agree to get them changed. Lighter drivers will have an advantage whatever the minimum weight, so all increasing the weight limit will do is disadvantage the heavier drivers less and possibly keep them in the sport. Let’s hope, for Hulkenberg’s sake, that Whitmarsh is wrong and – if it really is going to consign drivers like him to the fringes of Formula One – that a solution can be found. Let’s hope Hulkenberg doesn’t end up drawing the short straw yet again.