Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Hulkenberg admits surprise at Force India

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Nico Hulkenberg admit he has been surprised how well Force India has fared with its new car at the final pre-season test.

Force India only launched the VJM08 on Friday, rolling out for a handful of laps just before the lunch break. Since then the car has run reliably, allowing Hulkenberg to complete more than 200 laps during his day and a half in the car and he admits he wasn’t expecting to be able to do so much running.

"I think [the running] is a surprise, even to myself,” Hulkenberg said. “It's very good that we brought it here and just shook it out of our sleeve like this. That was a surprise, to me and to the team, but obviously that's what we needed.”

And Hulkenberg says he feels ready to race the VJM08 already due to its similarities with the 2014 Force India.

"I think given the little amount of time compared to everyone else I feel really comfortable and advanced in the car. The car doesn't feel in many ways too dissimilar to last year's car so it was easy to get into it again and adapt to it right away. I'm pretty positive and happy with the feeling I get inside the car."

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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.