{"id":10984,"date":"2011-02-10T10:18:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=10984"},"modified":"2011-02-10T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-10T15:18:50","slug":"hulkenberg-denies-mercedes-contact-over-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/hulkenberg-denies-mercedes-contact-over-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Hulkenberg denies Mercedes contact over 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Although he will not be on the Bahrain grid, Nico Hulkenberg will not be sitting idle in 2011.<\/div>\n<p>The ousted Williams driver is set to drive Force India&#8217;s new car on every Friday morning practice this year, and according to Auto Motor und Sport he will also have other duties.<br \/>\nThe German publication said the 23-year-old might contest a few rounds of the European Le Mans sports car series, as well as commentating on F1 with the German pay-broadcaster Sky.<br \/>\nReplaced at Williams by pay-driver Pastor Maldonado, Hulkenberg ended his disappointing winter by sampling Force India&#8217;s 2010 car at Valencia last week.<br \/>\nBut he then had to revert to a spectator&#8217;s role that he must now get used to.<br \/>\n&#8220;Watching hurts,&#8221; confirmed the German. &#8220;But the main thing is that I am still here, and hope dies last.&#8221;<br \/>\nHulkenberg&#8217;s manager thinks the Force India role was a case of damage limitation.<br \/>\n&#8220;It was the best solution possible, after waiting for Williams for so long,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nThere had been rumours of a similar reserve driver role with Mercedes.<br \/>\n&#8220;There was no contact between Mercedes and me,&#8221; clarifies Hulkenberg. &#8220;If I&#8217;d gone there it would have been harder for me to draw attention to myself as Mercedes already has two very good drivers.&#8221;<br \/>\nAuto Motor und Sport said there had been some contact with McLaren, but for now Hulkenberg is satisifed with hopefully following in Paul di Resta&#8217;s footsteps by preceding a full race seat with a season of Friday driving with Force India.<br \/>\n&#8220;This is my chance and I have to use it,&#8221; he insisted.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #888888;\">\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although he will not be on the Bahrain grid, Nico Hulkenberg will not be sitting idle in 2011. The ousted Williams driver is set to drive Force India&#8217;s new car on every Friday morning practice this year, and according to Auto Motor und Sport he will also have other duties. The German publication said the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,448],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10985,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984\/revisions\/10985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}