Freak gravel strike leads to Hulkenberg retirement in Barcelona

Nico Hulkenberg’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix came to a premature end as a result of a freak gravel strike to his car on Sunday.

The Audi driver was running in the points close behind Liam Lawson when the Racing Bulls driver ran wide out of Turn 12, kicking up gravel from the exit of the corner. One of the stones then struck the ERS kill switch that is located on the side of the engine cover - underneath the air intake - and shut the car down, forcing him out of the race.

“Nico's retirement was caused by gravel, kicked up by Lawson's car going wide, unfortunately hitting the fire extinguisher and ERS kill switch, which is supposed to switch the car off in case of emergency,” Audi said in a statement.

Hulkenberg himself called the incident “pretty unbelievable” as he saw a chance of scoring points for the first time this season disappear.

“Unfortunately we take nothing in terms of points when we should really have done, like last weekend, but this is really kind of unlucky, not much else,” he said. “It’s not meant to be yet, somehow, and we just need to keep at it.

"A pretty simple one, but a peculiar one. Liam in front dropped the wheel in the gravel and that gravel hit our car so hard that it just switched off. I think it pulled the emergency trigger on the side of the car, which is a complete switch off, which happened. The whole thing shut down and that was game over. Very strange. Very unlucky.

“I've never seen or heard about this, to be honest, in my career. Very unlucky. Strange. The timing of that, when you see what happened at the end, two cars dropping out, I don't know. Somehow, the racing world doesn't want us to score yet.”