Race and classic pictures

Young Nico making his name in A1GP

In the wake of the news that Nico Hulkenberg is leaving Force India to join the Renault factory team in 2017, we thought we'd take a look back to when a then-teenage Nico was making a name for himself in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport.

Nico competed in all but one round of the 2006-7 season for Team Germany. He won the first feature race of the season and then tasted victory again in Malaysia before coming to dominate the competition by sweeping sprint and feature events in three consecutive rounds in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. He finished the season with a flourish by clinching victory in the last race at Silverstone as Team German were crowned overall champions.

Nico would then move into Formula 3 Euro Series where he won the title in 2008, and the following year he was GP2 Series champion in his rookie season which opened the way to Formula One and a seat with Williams. He filled in for Adrian Sutil at Force India in 2012 and spent the following year at Sauber until Force India recalled him. He's spent the last three seasons there before deciding to move on to Renault for 2017.

That's a lot to have packed into the last decade, and it's hard to believe that Nico ever looked quite so young as he did celebrating his first A1GP win in the Netherlands in October 200 (above) or facing the press in Kuala Lumpur in November 2006 (below).

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.