Liam Lawson ended Nico Hulkenberg's Barcelona race with a flicked-up stone and no contact, a freak retirement that overshadowed the New Zealander's quietly impressive run of points form.
Liam Lawson took ninth at the Barcelona Grand Prix and, without laying a finger on anyone, ended a rival's race. Nico Hulkenberg's Audi retired on lap 29 in one of the strangest incidents of the 2026 season — and the man responsible had no idea he had done anything at all.
Hulkenberg, shadowing Lawson and already irritated by the New Zealander's defensive line into Turn 1, was running where Audi should have been scoring points. Then a single stone ended his afternoon.
"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," Hulkenberg told media including RacingNews365. "It just killed the car. It was a total switch-off and game over. The car was dead, and then obviously I just coasted into the pit lane. There was nothing left; it was just a complete shutdown."
The German has seen plenty in a long career, but nothing like this. "I've never seen or heard about this happening, to be honest, in my career. Very unlucky," he said. "Strange, the timing of that. When you see what happened at the end, two cars dropping out — I don't know, it's somehow... The racing world doesn't want us to score yet."
Lawson's reaction, once the explanation reached him, was disbelief. "Are you serious?! No way," he said. "Oh, that's so unfortunate. Obviously I had no idea. If I could perfectly aim for something like that, it would be quite impressive! But I had no idea, I just knew that he dropped out."
The freak exit was cruel on Audi, who reckoned they had the pace to beat both Racing Bulls and midfield-leading Alpine on the day. Gabriel Bortoleto's race in the other car had already unravelled at the start with a turbo-related problem, leaving the team empty-handed from a points-rich afternoon.
For Lawson, the gravel comedy masked a more serious story: he is quietly putting together the most consistent run of his F1 career. Ninth in Barcelona made it points in five of the last six rounds, lifting him to tenth in the drivers' standings on 28 points — already within 10 of his entire 2025 haul, with the season barely past halfway to that mark.
Racing Bulls principal Alan Permane set the bar for Lawson over the winter, and the early returns have impressed him. "I truly see genius in him," Permane told PlanetF1. "What he needs to do, and what he is doing so far, is eliminate mistakes. It's working on the consistency."
Lawson, for his part, is keeping the focus on the team. "We've managed to score points in most races, which is a testament to the hard work everyone is putting in," he said after Barcelona. "We're in a good place as a team and there's a lot to be optimistic about, so I'm looking forward to Austria and excited to see what we can achieve there."
There is reason for that optimism. The Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring on 29 June is where Lawson scored his breakthrough sixth place in 2025. Racing Bulls sit sixth in the constructors' standings, chasing Alpine for best of the rest — a gap Lawson's run of clean weekends is steadily helping to close.
---
*Originally published on [Newsformula One](https://newsformula.one/article/lawson-kills-hulkenbergs-audi-without-contact-in-barcelona). Visit for full coverage.*