Last week Nico Hülkenberg was very close to his first championship points in the current Formula 1 season. But because of a penalty, the Audi driver was not allowed to keep the points he had collected in Monaco. The Emmerich native also hoped for the top 10 at the Catalan Grand Prix – before a strange defect paralyzed him and forced him to give up.
Nico Hülkenberg had completed 32 laps in his Audi when the German drove his car into the pits with the last of his strength.
The mechanics of the German Formula 1 team briefly worked around on the car with the five rings before they also realized that the German could no longer continue the race. A problem with the drive unit cost him his first World Cup points in 2026.
At the time of the failure, the 38-year-old was in ninth place in the race. If the competition had failed later, P7 or P8 would have been absolutely achievable.
Particularly bitter: After it was initially unclear why Hülkenberg’s speedster went on strike, it later turned out that crazy circumstances and Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson played a part in the Audi’s defect.
Formula 1: Circumstances surrounding the Audi shock “curious and unusual”
“That was strange. Liam drove a bit with his left rear wheel into the gravel and threw up a lot of gravel,” Hülkenberg then described the reasons for his exit to “Sky”: “In the worst case scenario, the cars have a safety pull to the left of the air intake for the Marshalls. Some stone pulled the thing and switched the car off completely in one fell swoop.”
That was “pretty strange and unusual,” added the veteran, who said a comparable incident “hasn’t happened in the 16 years I’ve been here.”
The next dramatic setback for the Emmerich native, after he had actually scored points in Monaco the previous week, but was subsequently not allowed to keep them because of a controversial penalty.
Although developments at Audi are going in the right direction, Hülkenberg is still not satisfied. “Here it’s always difficult to do much behind another car because it’s bad for the tires. But another weekend has passed and we weren’t able to take anything with us, unfortunately for God,” said the German, summing up the Formula 1 weekend in Barcelona.