While Valtteri Bottas stunned the paddock by snatching pole position away from Lewis Hamilton, Renault driver Nico Hulkenberg quietly sneaked onto the 4th row in 7th behind the two Mercedes, Ferraris and Red Bulls. Hulkenberg was the best of the rest behind the top 3 teams. He had also qualified 7th in China last time around, although he was a full second behind pole position and 3 tenths slower than the Red Bulls.

However, despite the low starting position, he was relatively pleased with his performance. “It was seriously, together with Brazil 2010, the best lap in my career,” said Hulkenberg.”Especially around here, which I always found a struggle to hook it all up perfectly. But today it was smooth. It was beautiful. A great lap.”

“I’m happy, I’m positive from that respect. I think already yesterday we saw that one lap pace, the car has one lap pace. It’s like naturally there. I think that’s probably our strong point at the moment. So that’s pretty good, positive. Long run pace and tyre management, we will obviously find that out tomorrow. In Shanghai we were struggling a bit but yesterday we got some good long runs in. We tried to work against it a bit in Shanghai, made some changes. I hope that it’s better tomorrow. I think tomorrow will be a true test.”

When quizzed about the pace of the Renault, he said “I felt since winter testing it was there, from the beginning the car was good with that. In Barcelona we did a sub-1m20s lap time under normal circumstances, not underweight. We are still learning about the car. Trying different set-ups to understand the car more and more.”

But Hulkenberg was wary of the race pace of their fellow rivals and warned that even though they were 3 tenths slower than Red Bull in Qualifying, he has a strong feeling that they will be stronger in the race and even Williams will also be strong.