“Well, he made all of us look pretty average there.” 2010 Formula 1 title contender Mark Webber’s reaction to Nico Hulkenberg’s sensational Brazilian Grand Prix pole position said it all.
Coming into the Sao Paulo round, F1 was enjoying a five-way title fight between championship leader Fernando Alonso for Ferrari, Red Bull’s Webber and Sebastian Vettel, and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.
Driving for Williams alongside veteran Rubens Barrichello, Hulkenberg had been struggling on his F1 debut, scoring just one point in his first nine grands prix – from fifth on the grid in Malaysia, following a soaking-wet qualifying session.
Hulkenberg’s performance ramped up with consistent points finishes in the second half of the season, including sixth place in Hungary and seventh in Italy, but nobody could have predicted what happened in qualifying at Interlagos.
Hulkenberg took 11th in Q1 and eighth in Q2 on a wet track, each time more than two tenths slower than Barrichello, but the track was drying fast enough for slick tyres to be a viable option in Q3.
The German switched from intermediates to slicks at the right time, emulating his experienced team-mate, and went faster and faster, eventually taking first place by 1.049s over Vettel – his first and, to this day, only pole position.
The 23-year-old struggled to believe it. “The car felt good, I had a good rhythm and I was just pushing as hard as I could, and my engineer [Tom McCullough] told me I have a good pace,” he recounted shortly after the feat. “But then I expected when he came on the radio, that he’d say, ‘Yeah, you’re P5, P6’, the usual stuff. But then he said, ‘You’re pole position!’.”
Barrichello’s savviness played a key role in the shock result.
“Rubens was doing a lap on scrubbed inters and had a moment on one of the corners, so he didn't get a decent lap on scrubbed inters but said the track was dry, ‘I am coming in’,” Williams co-founder Patrick Head explained at the time.
“He was in putting dries in and Tom McCullough said, ‘Is the track ready for dries?’ and Nico said no, it was too wet for dries. Tom then said, ‘Well Rubens is in the pits putting on dries’, to which Nico nipped straight into the pits and put on dries.
“If you look at the times and sector times, you will see for Nico, he had a hard out lap and was able to do three consecutive hard laps. I don't think Nico would claim yet that the combination of Nico and Williams is quicker than Sebastian Vettel and a Red Bull in the dry.
“What he was able to do was get his tyres in the right temperature window better than anybody else and that was partly Nico's driving, toughness and determination, and partly the fact that he was able to do a hard out-lap and three consecutive hard laps.”
The youngster dropped down to third behind the Red Bulls on the first lap, eventually finishing eighth in the grand prix.
Despite stating that Hulkenberg would win the world championship one day “in the right team”, Frank Williams couldn’t resist new GP2 champion Pastor Maldonado’s mouthwatering Venezuelan backing, giving him the second seat for the 2011 F1 season.
Hulkenberg found himself on the sidelines with a reserve role at Force India, but is still competing nowadays after recovering from several career setbacks; he took his maiden podium finish at Silverstone this year, on the 239th time of asking, and is set to become F1’s 13th-most experienced driver ever this weekend with a 247th grand prix start.
Years later, his 2010 Interlagos performance remains unforgettable. “He drove it like he stole it,” McCullough told GP Racing in 2021. “That lap typifies him as a driver; phenomenal car control and natural talent to be able to drive right to the peak of the tyre slip angles. He’s just naturally fast.”
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