Nico Hulkenberg Cautious to Keep F1 Dreams and Goals in Check with Haas

• Nico Hulkenberg has not raced full time in Formula 1 since leaving Renault in 2019.

• Hulkenberg, 35, has started 181 races in his F1 career, dating back to 2010.

• Hulkenberg will team up at Haas with Kevin Magnussen; the two are renowned as tough racers, and famously had a heated exchange of words in Hungary in 2017.

The last time Nico Hulkenberg was a full-time Formula 1 driver, Max Verstappen was in single-digit wins, Lewis Hamilton was the dominant champion, and COVID-19 had yet to creep onto the horizon.

But Hulkenberg is back for 2023, with the Haas F1 Team for an alliance that may appear underwhelming but should be prosperous for both parties.

Hulkenberg relinquished his Renault seat after 2019 and has not competed full-time since. He remained associated with Formula 1 through a reserve role at Racing Point/Aston Martin, which led to five Grand Prix appearances across 2020 and 2022, most recently in Saudi Arabia in March.

Those sporadic outings were a reminder of Hulkenberg’s ability.

At Silverstone in 2020, he qualified the Racing Point in third and raced it to seventh. In his Nurburgring stand-in race that same season, he went in cold into qualifying, understandably starting last, but surged to eighth in the race.

In Bahrain this year, Hulenberg out-qualified teammate Lance Stroll despite a lack of pre-season testing.

Hulkenberg, a 35-year-old veteran racer with 181 F1 race starts to his name, will now align with Haas for 2023, in place of compatriot Mick Schumacher, and alongside Kevin Magnussen.

“Obviously (after) ‘19 I was out and I was happy, I had some distance and some breather from it,” Hulkenberg said, opting not to chase a seat in another racing series. “So I really had the time to step back, disconnect from it properly. Then it was COVID time so not much was going on.

"Once the 2020 season started, soon after that I came to Silverstone to replace Checo (Perez). But it was good for me to have time away to digest, to reflect on some things. It’s a change of perspective a little bit too. And then ‘21, of course, sometimes it's difficult when you have to watch, when you're on the side lines. But I think at that time it was still okay for me. And even earlier, at the beginning of this year, I wasn't stressing or thinking about it too much. But then coming towards the summer, it somehow grew in me again, when I came and visited races, saw the action and the excitement, I had the desire to come back. And then the discussions started.”