Hulkenberg: Strong 2017 form helped by regulation changes

The German has impressed his Renault bosses in 2017, and the margin he has enjoyed over Jolyon Palmer has heaped pressure on his British teammate to up his game.

Following several years where he was evenly matched with Sergio Perez at Force India, Hulkenberg suggests that his step up in performance is the result of simply being able to push harder with more downforce and bigger tyres this year.

“It is definitely more fun, and definitely faster,” said Hulkenberg, when asked by Motorsport.com for his verdict on the 2017 cars.

“I can only talk about myself, but they allow me to push harder, they are a bit more in favour of my driving style compared to recent years.

“You always had to drive within yourself as you couldn’t explore the limits, you couldn’t push as hard and these cars are in favour of that.

"You can go there easily and it works. So definitely more enjoyable.”

Hulkenberg says that finding the limit of the 2017 cars has been a challenge, but he does not think a spate of spins and crashes seen this year is proof that the cars are particularly nervous at high speed.

“They seem a bit more edgy,” he said. “I’ve seen many races this year races, like Baku [where Hulkenberg crashed], where there is very little room for error.

"So if it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. But I didn’t find too much difficulty, too much change.”