Haas braced for ‘busy night’ and engine change after Nico Hulkenberg fire

Nico Hulkenberg has confirmed an engine failure ended his practice running in Canada, and the team will be changing his internal combustion unit before Saturday.

The Haas driver came grinding to a halt with smoke billowing from his VF-23 early in FP2, after an FP1 session which was red-flagged for a CCTV issue after only a few minutes – meaning Hulkenberg will go into Saturday with a distinct lack of meaningful running underneath him.

With FP2 extended by 30 minutes to try and compensate, the German, like others, was hoping to make up for lost time – but was unable to do so on Friday.

Due to the nature of his car’s breakdown, he admitted it will leave a significant job for his mechanics to work on – though he stopped short of expecting it to be an “all-nighter” in the Haas garage.

“I got one run in but then, starting the second run, the ICU failed,” Hulkenberg said after the session.

“So, a little bit of smoke, a little bit of barbecue smell. Not ideal, obviously, heading into the rest of the weekend, but it is what it is now.

“You know, we’ll have to see what the other car did, try to learn from that and come up with the best possible package that we that we can tomorrow.”

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When asked about the implications for his mechanics, “Yeah, it will be busy. I mean, it’s an engine change, you know, and then a couple of components they have to obviously check and make race fit again.

“I think it’s not going to be an all-nighter or a super late night. But yes, it’s obviously challenging if you haven’t run much.

“The one run I did, I wasn’t too happy with it. So obviously not great that you can’t continue your work then but like I said, it is what it is, we have to face the music now.”

Team boss Guenther Steiner admitted the situation was far from ideal for the team, but they will look to make the best of a bad situation as they head into FP3 and qualifying on Saturday.

“It was a very disruptive day today, starting off with some of FP1’s lost run time being merged with FP2 which was very disruptive for us,” he said.

“FP2 wasn’t ideal because Nico’s ICU expired, shortening his session, and we only had one car to gather data and we had a lot of stuff we wanted to test.

“We didn’t get any definitive answers. Kevin did a good job, but we would’ve liked to have done more work with two cars across two sessions.”