Williams team owner, Sir Frank Williams, believes Nico Hulkenberg will be a future world champion, ‘hopefully’ with the Grove based team.
This will come as good news to the 2009 GP2 champion who has been under increasing pressure to perform as rumours suggest he’ll be dropped for Venezuelan driver, Pastor Maldonardo.
The 68-year-old praised his recent performances, with the German scoring 15 points in the latter half of the season, just three less than the more experienced Rubens Barrichello, but admitted some disappointment in the earlier half of the season.
“He was a little disappointing maybe in the first few races,” Williams told the BBC. “Perhaps he was being over-cautious. But lately he’s become very competitive and I think we’ve just seen the beginning of something very exceptional.
“He’s one of these drivers, a bit like Lewis [Hamilton], who was moved from ‘Formula this’ to ‘Formula that’ and won that formula, then went from ‘Formula that’ to ‘Formula something else’ and won that, all the way up through Formula 3 and GP2, he won every single championship.
“And in the right team – hopefully us, one day – he’ll win the world championship in Formula 1.”
When pressed on whether fans will see Hulkenberg in F1 next year, Williams replied: “Absolutely. We do hope so, yes.”
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