Nico Hulkenberg · Biography

The first title of Nicolas Hülkenberg’s career came in 2005, when he won Formula BMW ADAC in his first full season of single-seaters. Born on 19 August 1987 in Emmerich am Rhein, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia close to the Dutch border, the German driver went on to climb almost every rung of the junior ladder before reaching Formula 1 in 2010. In the championship he has raced for Williams, Force India, Sauber, Renault, Racing Point, Aston Martin and Haas. In 2015 he also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Porsche at his first attempt.

From karting to single-seaters

Hülkenberg started karting as a child and won German titles in the junior classes before moving into cars. After his 2005 Formula BMW ADAC crown he stepped up to German Formula 3. International attention arrived in the 2006-07 season of A1 Grand Prix, the nations’ series in which every car represented a country: driving for Team Germany he took nine wins and claimed the A1GP title by a wide margin. In 2007 he won the Formula 3 Masters at Zolder, and the following year he became Formula 3 Euro Series champion in 2008.

GP2 champion as a rookie

In 2009 he moved to GP2, the final step before Formula 1, with ART Grand Prix. Drivers in that series usually needed two or three seasons to fight for the title, but Hülkenberg won it in his first year, with victories at circuits such as the Nürburgring and the Hungaroring. The 2009 GP2 championship opened the door at Williams, where he was already test driver, and the team confirmed him as a race driver for 2010 alongside Rubens Barrichello.

Formula 1 debut and the Interlagos pole

His first Formula 1 season was a learning year until the 2010 Brazilian Grand Prix, where he read a drying track perfectly in qualifying and took pole position at Interlagos, Williams’ first since 2005. Despite that result, the team dropped him for 2011 for financial reasons. Hülkenberg spent that year as Force India’s reserve driver and returned to the grid with the Indian outfit in 2012. In Brazil that year he led the rain-hit race for dozens of laps until contact with Lewis Hamilton brought a penalty and ended his chance of victory.

Sauber, Force India and Le Mans

In 2013 he joined Sauber and finished fourth at the Korean Grand Prix. He went back to Force India in 2014 and stayed for three seasons, until 2016, as one of the most consistent drivers in the midfield. In 2015 he combined Formula 1 with Porsche’s endurance programme and, together with Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy, won the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Porsche 919 Hybrid. It was the first overall Le Mans win for a full-time Formula 1 driver since the 1990s.

Renault and the stand-in years

From 2017 to 2019 he drove for Renault during the French manufacturer’s return as a works team. He scored points regularly but never reached the podium, and at the end of 2019 he was left without a seat. In 2020 Racing Point called him up to replace Sergio Pérez and Lance Stroll, both ill with COVID-19, for three races: the two Silverstone Grands Prix and the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, where the call came on the morning of qualifying. In 2022 he filled the same role for Aston Martin in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, standing in for Sebastian Vettel.

Haas and the return to Sauber

Haas handed him a full-time seat again in 2023, and he partnered Kevin Magnussen for two seasons. In 2025 he returned to Sauber, the team Audi had bought to turn into its works entry. That year, at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, he finished third to take his first Formula 1 podium at his 239th start, the most starts before a maiden podium in the history of the championship. In 2026 the team began racing under the Audi name, with Hülkenberg and Brazil’s Gabriel Bortoleto as its race drivers.