Audi driver Nico Hulkenberg suffered a freak retirement in the Barcelona GP.

Audi driver Nico Hulkenberg experienced one of the most bizarre retirements in F1 history in the Barcelona GP after a stone forced him out of the race.

After rolling into the pits, it was revealed the engine kill switch had been activated after Liam Lawson ran off the road ahead of the Audi driver

Audi Barcelona GP retirement triggered by single stone

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Following Liam Lawson at the bottom end of the points, a stone thrown up by the Racing Bulls managed to dislodge the emergency pull chord on the Audi.

“He put a wheel in the gravel exit of [Turn] 12, kicked up a lot of gravel, and that gravel somehow one stone pulled the emergency trigger on the left of the roll hoop, and it just killed the car,” Hulkenberg told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media.

The German was able to roll the car back into the pits where he stopped, but the car couldn’t be refired and his race was over.

“I would have never seen or heard about this to be honest in my career,” Hulkenberg mused.

“Very unlucky, strange… The timing of that, when you see what happened at the end, two higher placed cars dropping out….

“The racing world doesn’t want us to score yet.”

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Lawson went on to finish the race in ninth, banking more valuable points for Racing Bulls, blissfully unaware of the impact he’d had on Hulkenberg.

“Are you serious,” he explained when he learned of how the Audi driver retired.

“No way. Oh, that’s so unfortunate! Obviously, I had no idea, and if I could perfectly aim for something like that…!

“I had no idea. I just knew that he, that he dropped out.”

While Hulkenberg was forced out of the race, Gabriel Bortoleto in the other Audi saw the chequered flag on spot outside the points-paying places.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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