Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLe Mans

Le Mans win my greatest achievement - Hulkenberg

Nico Hulkenberg has described his Le Mans 24 Hours victory for Porsche as the greatest achievement in his career.

The Force India driver was making his Le Mans debut this weekend, driving Porsche's third LMP1 entry having also competed at Spa-Francorchamps earlier this season as preparation. Having taken an impressive victory alongside Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber as part of a Porsche one-two, Hulkenberg admits it eclipses anything else he has done in his career so far.

“A good week for sure, a very good week," Hulkenberg said. "Today is a great achievement, probably the greatest in my career. Just after the win now it’s still tough to realise, maybe it will come in the next few days but next week I am racing again in F1 in Austria so I keep on pushing.

"Yeah, coming straight here from Canada on Monday, scrutineering and then being here all week it was a busy and long week. I think it was worth it in the end with the victory, but also with the guys within Porsche we have a great atmosphere in the team. There’s a great team spirit across all the different cars and I’ve had a lot of fun with these boys as well which I think is very important.”

And Hulkenberg says the result far exceeds both his own expectations and those of Porsche ahead of the race.

“The goals internally were to put at least one car on the podium, now we’ve got a double victory that’s a hell of a lot better. So I think we can all be very proud of what we achieved today. On the 19 car it was a very flawless race. When the night came in the track really came towards us, we had great pace, mistakeless, we had a good rhythm, good flow, the team did a great job.”

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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.