F1 News: Nico Hulkenberg Sends Serious Message To Haas - "Been Brutally Overtaken"

After a rather challenging 2023 season, Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg feels the team needs to pull their socks up for 2024.

Nico Hulkenberg has sent a serious message to his Haas team after struggling quite badly in the season's grand finale in Abu Dhabi. The team ended the 2023 season at the bottom of the Constructors' Championship with just 12 points.

Haas's VF-23 F1 cars faced two major challenges throughout the season- high tire degradation and a lack of upgrades. Though a major upgrade package was introduced in the United States, Hulkenberg ran the old spec in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi, as opposed to teammate Kevin Magnussen, who preferred the newer spec. 

However, the last race proved that the upgrades didn't seem to work. At the Yas Marina circuit, Haas faced challenges similar to their overall season. While Hulkenberg performed well in qualifying, starting in eighth place, the car's increased tire wear caused him to drop to 15th during the race while Magnussen finished last in 20th place. Both cars ran with minor differences in the spec. 

Speaking to the media, here's what Hulkenberg had to say:

"I don't think there is a huge difference between them, minor differences. 

"Last weekend, I felt actually the new package had an edge over the old package on a low downforce configuration. This weekend I felt quite okay, Kevin didn't feel so happy.

"They are so similar, but that's in itself obviously not good enough. An update is supposed to be better and fix some of your issues and unfortunately, that didn't happen."

When he was asked if there was anything specific that needed change over the winter break, the Haas driver added:

"I don't know if it proved anything. We need to work hard because I want us to do better, we need to pick up our feet, do a better job.

"The signs were there early in the season, and we got away with it earlier in the season because other people also were struggling. Once they cleaned up and brought some real developments, that's when we really started to pay the penalty.

"The second half of the season has been really tough, there was only an opportunity to score a point or two for me in Singapore, which we missed.

"Apart from that we just never had the pace to do it, even when there was a lot of cars dropping out we were just too far away from it.

"Of course that's not great and that's why we need to be better."

Adding further, Hulkenberg sent a message to the factory that the new car was not faster and some serious work needed to be done for the next year. He told Sky Sports Deutschland:

"I have demonstrated that the new car is not faster and that is quite clearly a problem.

"It's a message to our factory, to the engineers and mechanics.

"Next year we have to do things differently. That has been our problem this year. Our development was at a standstill and we have been brutally overtaken."