Renault driver Nico Hulkenberg insisted his excellent performance to claim fifth on the grid will mean nothing if he is not able to turn it into a solid race result at the British Grand Prix.
The German used the early exit for Daniel Ricciardo to beat the Force Indias and set the sixth best time, benefiting from Valtteri Bottas’ penalty to start fifth on Sunday, his best position of the season so far.
However, the problem Renault has had this year is maintaining positions in the race and for Hulkenberg, his performance on Saturday will mean little if he can’t stay there.
“I’m happy — it was quite good but we’ve had a couple of really good qualifying results and then a more disappointing Sunday,” he explained.
“So no point to brag on about it or get too excited tomorrow is the hard bit of work for us and obviously where we need to win some points. We have to get it done there.”
Hulkenberg showed once again he is one of the best drivers in wet conditions competing at the top of the grid during a damp Q1 and Q2.
“It was tricky but I like these conditions when you are not quite sure where the grip is. There were some damp patches in Q2 so I think we were actually really competitive in those sorts of moments in Q1 and Q2 especially.
“When it started to dry up we were concerned we would slip through the ranks but we were able to keep the pace and hang on to the good position.”
The 29-year-old is also being boosted by improvements to the RS17 and is working to compare that to the old-spec parts on his teammate’s car.
“The update is working well,” he said. “We still need to understand a bit how much it really brings and what it’s really done and Jo on the other floor was also going really strong.
“Sometimes you need a bit more time with an update to optimise the set up around it and see where we on.
“Yesterday over one lap, it was going OK already, that was with the new floor. This weekend the one lap pace from Friday afternoon was actually there or thereabouts. It was OK.
“Since yesterday the long run was not so satisfying for me, we’ve changed a bit since but I can’t really tell. We’ll find out tomorrow I guess.”
