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Nico Hulkenberg admitted he suffered from ‘human degradation’ during his F1 test return in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
The German is set to join Kevin Magnussen at Haas next season, marking a full-time return to the sport.
Hulkenberg has been restricted to cameo appearances over the past three years, making several outings with Racing Point and Aston Martin.
The most recent of those came at the start of 2022 when he replaced Sebastian Vettel in the opening to race of the year.
He took part in a Pirelli tyre test at the Hungaroring in the middle of the year but has otherwise been sidelined.
Logging over 100 laps on Tuesday was therefore useful to bring himself up to speed with his new team, though also tiring given his comparative lack of recent running.
“It’s not just the neck, it’s the body too, you know; the glutes have to work a lot,” he explained.
“It was hard, it was tough. I was feeling some human degradation towards the end of the day, too!
“But that was to be expected. Actually, I think I coped better than I expected to be honest, so that’s good.”
Hulkenberg was 19th fastest of the 24 runners on track in Yas Marina, though logged two grand prix distances.
It offered him something of an insight into the team and the car, even if the latter will change for 2023.
“Obviously the team has worked with this car all year long, so they know the car pretty well,” he said of his time behind the wheel.
“But you know, it’s sometimes, to hear it from someone that comes [in], because drivers get used to the car, even during one day, you can get used to things pretty easily.
“So sometimes it’s good to have someone new come in and have a new opinion or a different perspective.
“For me, obviously it was about getting the first taste of it; experience the car, get the mileage, a lot of standard basic procedures as well which are important.
“It’s not about lap time, the comfort that happens [in] parallel, but the important stuff is the performance, stuff that you identify – ‘well, where can we do better? How can we go faster?’ – and pinpoint that very well and try to work with engineers to find ways and solutions with that.
“Obviously, next year, it’s going to be a new car, so the cards are going to be shuffled a little bit again, and we’ll see what we get once we start working.”
Formula 1 now heads into winter, with pre-season testing ahead of the 2023 campaign set to begin in Bahrain on February 23-25.
