Hulkenberg: RS17 is basically a good car

Editor

Nico Hulkenberg believes Renault have a “good” car in the RS17, there are just a “number of details” that need to be worked on.

The German, who swapped from Force India to Renault in the off season, scored his first points of the campaign last time out in Bahrain.

Qualifying an impressive seventh, Hulkenberg finished the grand prix in ninth place to bag the team’s first points of 2017.

And although happy with his RS17, he says there are still areas in which Renault need to improve.

“I’m a race driver so I want improvement in every area!” he said.

“The car is basically good, it’s just a number of details where we need to improve.

“The positive is we know what these areas are and what we need to do to improve them.

“We want more downforce and to improve the car aerodynamically and we want to use the tyres better in the race.”

Hulkenberg reckons last week’s two-day test at the Sakhir circuit yielded good results for Renault as they look to build on his Bahrain GP points.

“I have quite a bit of optimism,” he added.

“I think we made good progress to enable us to improve our race pace for Sochi when we were testing in Bahrain and we have some new bits for the car to facilitate this too.

“Of course, the Sochi Autodrom is a completely different circuit, so we can’t accurately predict our relative performance until we get there, but I’m feeling positive.”