Nico Hulkenberg: A backmarker’s secret ingredient for success?

By crossing the finish line at Albert Park in seventh place, Nico Hulkenberg scored more points for Kick Sauber — six — in one single race than the team was able to amass in the entirety of 2024.

Hulkenberg may have the most F1 starts without a podium or a win compared to any other driver, but the German racer’s consistency seems to make him every backmarker’s dream when it comes to crawling up the leaderboard.

Nico Hulkenberg’s winless streak focuses on the wrong stats

Kick Sauber elected to retain its 2022-2023 lineup when heading into the 2024 season, which meant Valtteri Bottas was able to complete his thirteenth season in Formula 1, while China’s first F1 driver Zhou Guanyu got a shot at a third year behind the wheel.

It was, to put it simply, a disaster. Zhou was the only driver on the team to score in 2024 thanks to an eighth-place finish in Qatar, but those four points were nowhere near enough to move the needle when it came to the World Constructors’ Championship.

Sauber finished 2024 in 10th of 10 teams, losing a position compared to 2023.

At the same time, the Haas F1 team was taking a turn. When Nico Hulkenberg joined Kevin Magnussen at Haas in 2023, the team scored a measly 12 points — good enough for dead last in the Constructors’ standings.

But in 2024, the team turned around, taking 58 points and a strong seventh in the WCC. The bulk of the team’s points were scored by Hulkenberg — 41 to Magnussen’s 16, and Oliver Bearman’s seven.

Is Hulkenberg actually the secret ingredient to backmarker success?

Nico Hulkenberg’s unfortunate F1 statistics:

👉 Revealed: The top 10 drivers with the most F1 points without winning a race

👉 The unfortunate holders of the most unwanted records in Formula 1

If Hulkenberg has been anything in his career, he has been consistent. No, he may not have scored podiums or wins, but he’s often been the strongest driver on any team he’s been signed to.

Hulkenberg has outperformed his teammate in six of the full seasons he’s contested, and has failed to outperform his teammate in four of those seasons (and his teammates those years were race winners like Rubens Barrichello, Sergio Perez, and Daniel Ricciardo), with an outlier in 2017 thanks to Carlos Sainz taking over Jolyon Palmer’s Renault seat midway through the year.

And in many ways, that makes him the perfect candidate for those back-of-the-field teams looking to find an edge on the competition.

While there are any number of reasons certain F1 teams struggle — a lack of funding, small staffs, a wrong developmental turn — the quality of the drivers behind the wheel can either make or break a team. Look at Williams floundering with its pay drivers over the past few years, and compare it to the renewed vigor it displays with two quality, experienced racers on staff.

Hulkenberg cut his teeth at Force India, a team that seemed perpetually on the brink of disaster. When every race weekend becomes a potential audition for a future employer because your current team could fold at any second, a driver must be steady, stable, and reliable. He cannot have an off day.

At the same time, he must also develop an intimate understanding of how to make the car quicker, how to pull the most from it, how to communicate any changes to his team in such a way that they’re able to address those concerns with upgrades and new car designs.

This isn’t to say that drivers at the top-tier teams don’t have these skills, because it’s abundantly clear that the likes of Max Verstappen can wrangle even the most difficult car into submission. But there’s a particular urgency that has to develop for the drivers further down the field should they hope to keep their careers alive — and with his debut season taking place back in 2010, and a revival of his F1 career after a hiatus, it should be clear that Hulkenberg has displayed those strengths in spades.

In many ways, it’s a shame that Hulkenberg has never had a shot at a truly front-of-the-field team, because he’d surely have made a statement. Perhaps a World Championship wouldn’t have been in his grasp, but any team would have been glad to count on him as a team player, and as a strong mind should a problem arise.

Of course, Hulkenberg alone isn’t the sole determining factor in a team’s success, considering the hundreds of people who contribute to a car’s design. (After all, Gabriel Bortoleto also looked strong in Australia before a part failure caused the crash that saw him retire from the race.) Nor is he a guaranteed shoo-in for points, as a challenging race in China proved.

But Hulkenberg certainly does seem to provide a certain stabilizing factor, an ability to extract the absolute maximum from a race car — and then, perhaps, a little bit extra on top. It’s what makes him any backmarker’s secret weapon when it comes to rediscovering their success.

Read next: Five big Chinese Grand Prix questions we want answers to