Williams confident Hulk will deliver
Date published : 16 Mar 2010 - 16:19:46
Williams technical director Sam Michael is confident it won't be long before Nico Hulkenberg produces the kind of performances the team is expecting from him following the rookie's difficult debut in Bahrain.Hulkenberg, the reigning GP2 champion, started promisingly last weekend as he outpaced veteran team-mate Rubens Barrichello in all three practice sessions, two of which saw him claim top-10 positions.But a small error on his final Q2 lap contributed to him qualifying half a second adrift of the Brazilian in 13th before a messy start to the race, including a wild spin across the gravel which damaged his FW32, contributed to him finishing a lapped 14th.Michael, however, thinks the highly-rated German youngster is developing well and is sure there are much better days to come.Nico handled himself well, Michael said.He was quick throughout practice, but then he made a small, but time costly, mistake in qualifying. He then had a bit of a messy race. Nico is a smart guy who's developing a great relationship with his engineers, Tom McCullough and Andrew Murdoch, and I know he'll deliver.Technical problems on Friday, which particularly affected Barrichello's car, had left the Grove-based team playing catch-up over the weekend.And while Williams's new lead driver still managed to salvage a point from the opening round, Michael says the FW32 will prove more competitive once the issues that handicapped its performance in Bahrain are resolved. We had quite a few issues to sort out in the days leading up to the Grand Prix and it became apparent early on that we would have some fire-fighting to do in the build-up to the race to ensure we finished on Sunday, he added.Because of that, we had three or four things on the FW32 in Bahrain that we couldn't change quickly. Most of those elements can be corrected over the next couple of races and that should offer a good step in performance.
