F1: 5 Predictions for the Belgian GP 2019

#5 Nico Hulkenberg makes a statement on the track

Nico might be on his way out of Renault

It's almost official that Mercedes would keep Valtteri Bottas for the 2020 season and release Esteban Ocon to Renault. In the crossfire though there is one driver who is going to lose out. Nico Hulkenberg, one of the architects of Renault's progress in the last few years would most likely not have his contract renewed by the French team.

There are multiple ways to look at this season's head to head between Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo. Although Ricciardo enjoys a healthy advantage in both qualifying and races in terms of numbers, there have been multiple races where Hulkenberg has been compromised both in the races and in qualifying with Silverstone coming to mind as one of the more recent races where Hulkenberg was heavily compromised by the team themselves.

At the same time, it would be remiss to forget that Hulkenberg was on course for a top-5 finish in Bahrain before his engine gave up on him and he was running in top-3 at Germany before the inexplicable error that ended his race. Either of those results would have put Nico ahead of Daniel in the standings. With his seat in danger, we might see a motivated Nico trying to prove his detractors wrong. If he can outscore Ricciardo this season it might attract a few other teams as well. In a show of support for the affable German, we predict Nico beating Daniel this weekend.