The MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hulkenberg will start his 200th Formula One Grand Prix in Mexico today from 12th place after setting a fastest time of 1:18.524s and speaking following Saturday’s session the German commented saying:
“You’re always hoping for more. With the weekend that we’ve had, it’s been a real struggle and we’ve played a lot with
the set-up, but I’m happy with the changes made going into qualifying again. It felt good, positive, and to be honest, if
you told me P12 before the session, I would’ve definitely taken that. It’s tough, we’re not quick enough on merit so
we’ll need outside circumstances to help us get a result, but we’ll hang in there and hopefully get something from it.
Kevin Magnussen in the sister Haas car starts the race from 17th place following a time of 1:19.163s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“It’s so incredibly tight out there, basically one second between the whole field pretty much, and we’re at the trailing
end of that. For us, this track is probably more difficult because of the thin air and ambient pressure not helping us in
terms of cooling, so it’s pretty much what we expected. I’ve had about five laps before qualifying all in all here, so I
can’t say too much about the long run, I haven’t had one. It’s been a tough weekend not doing FP1 and having an
issue in FP3 as well, I haven’t really had the best of preparations
Haas F1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner commented saying:
“Starting P12 with Nico and P16 with Kevin is actually where we thought we were, pretty good. We got the best out of
it and maybe got a little bit lucky to get into Q2, but we took it and squeezed everything out of what we could.
Hopefully with those positions, let’s see what happens tomorrow because I was surprised today, and I hope I get
another good surprise tomorrow.”