🇬🇧 F1'25, R12: Timeless

Imagine being an F1 driver around the middle or back of the grid. You get to go to all the parties, drive around the world and no one outside of your inner circle really notices you. You’re there, but you’re not necessarily present, an ascended extra in a cast of thousands, involved only if your team throws out a fancy livery or if there’s a blue flag involved.

Maybe you get some of the spotlight by leading the odd lap because you’ve gone long on the strategy and you steal a few points every season, accumulating enough to be known as a steady, reliable hand, with every team move in theory sending you lower on the grid with the media and fans surprised that you’re still actually there. One of those character actors rather than a blockbuster leading man.

You eventually leave the grid and join the media circus, applying your knowledge to today’s drivers, providing a perspective that few can offer, except you can’t tell them what an F1 podium or a win feels like, because it never quite happened for you. You can tell people watching what it’s like to watch your countryman win the title in your first season on the grid, watching Sebastian Vettel become the sport’s youngest World Champion as the RB6 (or as Vettel called it Randy Mandy and Luscious Liz) won five races that season.

Then, in your first season off the grid, the world changed and suddenly negative flow tests and face masks became the order of the day. While you’re holding a microphone, you’re suddenly one of the few people at the circuit who can drive an F1 car well, and this new illness knocks out another driver, allowing for an understudy to go on one last irresistible run. You score points, and then you repeat the trick later in the season. But the odd nature of the year means it doesn’t convert into anything more than that for 2021.

Never mind, you’re settled into your new routine as media talent and you still fly round the world, but with less risk involved. 2022 comes around and that same title-winning countryman tests positive for COVID. You step into a faster car than before in theory and you don’t quite score points, but somewhere, in the mind of an Italian running an American team, a thought occurs…

Somehow, you’re back on the grid. You’ve replaced the son of the guy who was on the grid when you started in F1. Your Haas team finishes last, but you get seventh in Australia as the Team’s best result of the year. Your second season in your second life goes much better. 41 points and an early confirmed move to a new outfit for 2025. You even score consecutive sixth places in Austria and Silverstone as Red Bull spend most of the season on the top step.

You’re back with the team you previously scored your best F1 result with. A fourth in Korea, getting so close to the podium. A fifth in Monza. This time though, the team is in transition, with Audi waiting in the wings, suddenly every race becomes an audition, the costs controlled a bit more than they might be ahead of the new owners. In a sport where the new and shiny is seen as essential and innovative, you’re now something of a throwback.

No matter. The experience of Silverstone and a stolen seventh in on a wet track in 2015 gives you the experience you need 10 years later to run in the English summer rain.

With your team calling you in for slicks, you run your own race, ignoring and negotiating with a pit wall that can see everything. You decide what you’re doing through a free hit, starting down in 19^th .

There was an element of luck involved as Verstappen spun, but in the customer car, the Sauber held off Lewis Hamilton for a first podium. The scenes of celebration were genuinely heartfelt. Mercedes and Aston Martin send you champagne because they heard you had none in your own fridges, allowing you to break ice in case of emergency podium.

@mercedesamgf1

“Congratulations on your first podium. From the Mercedes Team” 💚💚 #Mercedes #F1 #Sauber #Champagne #NicoHulkenberg

Who knows what might happen as Nico Hülkenberg and Sauber maybe get a second wind? Fifteen points represents the best single-race return for Sauber since the team’s last podium in 2012 and Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi grabbing third in his home race.

As a viral Thread showed the other day (and please accept my apologies, because I can’t find it), Formula 1 is a reality show with lap times attached, and Hülkenberg’s shock third was a universally popular result as the reality show hits a short mid-season break. Everyone liked this because of its infrequency and because it was 238 Grands Prix in the making.

It now means Adrian Sutil takes the unwanted record of the most F1 races without stepping on the podium and when the Belgian Grand Prix takes place at the end of July, it will be Yuki Tsunoda’s record as he searches for that elusive Tsunodium.

That step and celebration on the podium must have been some release for Hülkenberg. The drivers alongside him are old hands at the routine now, and who cares if they did or did not celebrate enough with their unexpected guest. They might as well have not been there as while Lando Norris narrows the gap to Oscar Piastri, the real story was the one lower down the grid and a real Hollywood ending that not even McLaren test driver Brad Pitt could star in.

Thanks for reading, as always.