F1: Hulkenberg Encouraged But Cautious

Formula 1

F1: Hulkenberg Encouraged But Cautious

Nico Hulkenberg was surprisingly high on the time sheet in Free Practice Two...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted March 16, 2012 Melbourne (AUS)

Nico Hulkenberg has run well the last two Grands Prix. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Nico Hulkenberg celebrated his return to F1 by taking second place in FP2 in Australia, making the most of a drying track at the end of the session just as he did when he took pole in Brazil for Williams in 2010.

However, Hulkenberg conceded that in normal circumstances things are going to be much tougher for Force India. He was 12th in the first session, which had a longer dry window.

“It’s always nice to be quite high up on the sheet, but you have to stay realistic and grounded,” said the German. “That’s not where I and the team see ourselves. Certainly, we’ll try and will always push as hard as we can, but I don’t think that is our expectation.

“I see a lot of other strong teams out there at the same time. The car feels quite OK, there’s no dramas there and driveability is good, the balance seems to be OK. But ultimately what the performance is at the end of the day, I’m not sure about yet.

“I think it’s been an OK day. We finally got some running here in Melbourne, which I’ve looked forward to for a long time. It’s not been the worst day, but obviously mixed conditions, so all the program we’d planned prior to today was a bit in the bin because the weather mixed it up for us.”

Hulkenberg downplayed the chances of battling for a Q3 slot on Saturday.

“It is possible, but I also think we really have to stretch ourselves,” he said. “I think P2 wasn’t entirely representative, because people were running around on softs and hards (tires), so it’s not a fair compare, and I don’t see ourselves in that position. We’ll just wait and see what we can achieve tomorrow.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.

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