{"id":738094,"date":"2026-06-15T10:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/738094\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T10:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:50:17","slug":"the-wild-reason-behind-nico-hulkenbergs-barcelona-gp-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/738094\/","title":{"rendered":"The wild reason behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Barcelona GP retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

An on-track battle with Liam Lawson<\/a> caused a very peculiar retirement for Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> at the Barcelona Grand Prix, one the Formula 1 veteran had \u201cnever seen\u201d before.<\/p>\n

Hulkenberg was trying to overtake Lawson for ninth during lap 28 of Sunday\u2019s contest, but a sudden mechanical failure caused him to peel into the pitlane for an early end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the Racing Bulls<\/a> driver had \u201cput a wheel in the gravel exit\u201d of Turn 12 and that flung the mess into\u00a0Hulkenberg\u2019s Audi<\/a>, causing a smashed mirror and pierced nosecone.<\/p>\n

But more crucially, the gravel “pulled the emergency trigger” according to Hulkenberg, thus causing terminal damage.\u00a0\u201cIt just killed the car and totally switched off,” the German added. “The car was dead and then, obviously, I just coasted into the pitlane. There was nothing left, it was completely shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a particularly unfortunate incident for\u00a0Hulkenberg as he was on course for his first points finish of the 2026 campaign, but instead he sits 19th in the standings for debutant Audi.<\/p>\n

The German marque has only scored points through Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a>\u2019s ninth-place finish at the Melbourne opener, but was on for a good haul considering Lawson ultimately finished eighth on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\"Nico <\/p>\n

Nico Hulkenberg, Audi F1 Team, Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls<\/p>\n

Photo by: Simon Galloway \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Though a lot of that was down to two late retirements, as Kimi Antonelli<\/a> suffered an engine failure whilst second with three laps remaining. At the same time, the power steering went on sixth-placed\u00a0Charles Leclerc<\/a>\u2019s Ferrari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking more on his retirement, 38-year-old Hulkenberg said: \u201cI’ve never seen or heard about this, to be honest, in my career. Very unlucky. Strange, the timing of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see what happened at the end, two top cars dropping out. I don’t know, it’s somehow\u2026the racing god doesn’t want us to score yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Lawson, Barcelona continued a strong start to his season as he\u2019s now claimed five points finishes across the opening seven grands prix, including in the last three.<\/p>\n

Yet he was unaware about the cause of\u00a0Hulkenberg\u2019s retirement until it was put to him afterwards, saying: \u00a0\u201cYou serious? No way, that\u2019s so unfortunate. Obviously I had no idea and if I could perfectly aim for something like that\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I had no idea, I just knew that he dropped out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An on-track battle with Liam Lawson caused a very peculiar retirement for Nico Hulkenberg at the Barcelona Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[262910,49,48,578,262911,576,577,3027,3019,82,265077],"class_list":["post-738094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-barcelona-catalunya-gp","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-barcelona-catalunya-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-liam-lawson","tag-nico-hulkenberg","tag-sports","tag-the-wild-reason-behind-nico-hulkenbergs-barcelona-gp-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}