If there were an award for the unluckiest driver of the day at the Barcelona Grand Prix, it would undoubtedly go to Nico Hulkenberg. Just when it seemed his first top-ten finish of the year was well within reach, disaster struck in the most agonizing way. A stone kicked up by Liam Lawson’s car struck the emergency switch on Hulkenberg’s car, completely shutting down his Audi alongside his hopes of a points finish. Things didn’t go much better for his teammate Gabriel Bortoleto, who, after a difficult start, had to manage a damaged car for the remainder of the Grand Prix.
Hulkenberg robbed by bizarre stone-inflicted retirement: “It’s frustrating”
What happened to Nico Hulkenberg during the Barcelona Grand Prix is highly likely one of the most bizarre DNFs a driver can experience. Around the midway point of the race, his Audi was hit by debris kicked up by Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls on the kerb at Turn 12. Specifically, the stray stone struck the emergency lever located beneath the roll-hoop, triggering an instantaneous shutdown of his car. The switch, marked with the letter “E” on the chassis, is designed for marshals to cut all power and electrical systems in a severe emergency. For this reason, it is commonly known as the “kill switch.”
“Everything suddenly went dead,” Hulkenberg told the media after his retirement. “Liam, who was just ahead of me, put a wheel in the gravel on the outside of Turn 12, kicking up quite a lot of it. It hit our car pretty hard, including some electrical components. In fact, it pulled the safety switch on the side of the car, shutting it down completely. It’s frustrating.”
Following a strong weekend showing, the German driver was actively hunting down his first points finish with Audi.
“Unfortunately, we come away with nothing in terms of points, just like we should have done last weekend, but this is truly bad luck and there is nothing you can do about it. It was probably fate that it wasn’t our time just yet, but we have to keep going down this path.”
Bortoleto also finishes outside the points: “Something went wrong in the start procedure”
Gabriel Bortoleto’s performance further confirmed that Audi possessed a competitive package at Montmelò. The Brazilian crossed the line in eleventh after a compromised launch off the line, highlighting an area that continues to plague the team.
“We had an issue at the start that still needs to be clarified, but something went wrong during the procedure,” he stated in the media pen. “I lost something like seven positions or so. I dropped from twelfth to seventeenth or eighteenth, and then I had a racing incident with Ocon. We touched and I ended up in the gravel, which caused a lot of damage to the car, and I had to drive it like that until the end.”
Despite the setback, Gabriel Bortoleto found silver linings in the weekend. “I think we had good pace throughout the weekend, and it’s encouraging to see that on two completely different circuits we were right in the fight for points, which is fantastic,” he concluded.
This optimism regarding their baseline performance was shared by Audi Racing Director Allan McNish. “Gabi got stuck in a train of cars, and on top of that, the trip through the gravel damaged his car. He then went into recovery mode and finished 11th, just outside the points. From a team perspective, it had been an intense weekend right up to the race. It’s disappointing that we couldn’t translate the pace we showed into points, but the underlying performance was definitely there.”
In conclusion, extracting performance while managing unexpected technical anomalies and race starts will remain top priorities for Audi as they develop their package. While freak retirements like Hulkenberg’s kill switch incident are impossible to predict, the consistent upward trajectory shown by both drivers across different track layouts proves that the team is building a competitive foundation capable of regularly challenging for points in upcoming rounds.
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