“He put a wheel in the gravel at the exit of 12, kicked up a lot of gravel. And that gravel somehow, once stone, pulled the emergency trigger on the left. And it just killed the car, you know, from then to now. It just totally switched off,” the German said after the race.
“The car was dead. And then obviously I just coasted into the pit lane. There was nothing left. It was, yeah, just a complete shutdown.”
Photo: Race Pictures
Hulkenberg was surprised by this as well, and was disappointed given that Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc’s DNF towards the end of the race meant more points were on the table. “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, you know, two top cars dropping out. I don’t know, somehow the racing world doesn’t want us to score yet.”
Hulkenberg praises strong pace
On the other hand, the German was positive about the pace of his car, and discussed what would have been possible last Sunday. “Yeah, absolutely. I think we had way more pace, but if you stuck behind the car here, which was Liam for me the entire race until we stopped, it was pretty difficult. When you get close, it just immediately, yeah, it takes a toll on your tyres and it’s just, you know, kind of a downward spiral from there. Had we managed to get ahead of him, I think we could have had quite a strong pace from there,” he concluded.