Nico Hulkenberg expected more from rivals McLaren during French GP
F1 News
McLaren might have had one of their better results over the past five years, but Nico Hulkenberg says he expected more from his rivals in McLaren cars. The papaya orange team now leads the 'best of the rest' battle by eight points, while Hulkenberg finds himself 10 points down on Carlos Sainz.
Ahead of the French Grand Prix, McLaren qualified on the third row of the grid. The Woking-based team had help from Pierre Gasly and Sebastian Vettel who both made mistakes out on the track.
Still, Hulkenberg qualified eight places behind Lando Norris but still managed to finish ahead of the young British driver on Sunday. He expected more from the McLaren team.
"They were pretty bad today [last Sunday]. In a way, bad, I mean we beat one of them. Carlos [Sainz Jnr] was not far from us, I believe. It only took a few seconds," Hulkenberg said.
Norris picked up problems towards the end of the Grand Prix and was fighting a car which wanted to give up on him. For a few laps, Norris was able to keep the two Renaults and Kimi Raikkonen in his rearview mirror but failed to do so on the penultimate lap. It's unclear whether Hulkenberg knew about this at the time of this interview.
"Looking at Friday's pace and Saturday's pace, we were more concerned about whether we could compete with them today [last Sunday]. We were able to do it again today and I expected a little more from them today," Hulkenberg added