Nico Hulkenberg enjoyed a remarkable run into the points in the Australian Grand Prix, but early on the Haas driver had a serious “code brown moment” when he arrived on the scene of Alex Albon’s crash.
Hulkenberg was running just behind Albon and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly in the opening stages of the race when the Williams driver lost it at Melbourne’s Turn 6 and hit the barrier on the left, his car rolling backwards onto the track and into the path of Gasly and Hulkenberg.
The Alpine and the Haas just narrowly avoided colliding with the stricken Williams, but it was a “nightmare scenario” according to the Hulk.
“Holy moly, I mean seriously I had a code brown in that moment,” said the Haas driver, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“That was seriously scary. I mean, thank God nothing happened. But this is a nightmare scenario. You’ve come around a blind corner in a street circuit.
“I mean, that was seriously scary and sketchy. That’s a bad example of a driver losing the car, crashing and coming back onto the track, and because there’s a gravel trap, there was dust, so you could not really see much.
“I think Pierre was in front of me, he was the first car, I was the second car, and no marshal in the world can react that fast.
“We didn’t have yellow flags, I just saw the cloud of dust and I saw gravel flying around, so I sort of didn’t take the ideal or normal racing line, I went a bit wider.
“I think I still didn’t miss him by much though, I immediately shouted on the radio that we need a safety car and that it was a dangerous situation.”
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After the red flag commotion and restart, Hulkenberg settled in seventh place, leading Lando Norris for most of the afternoon until tyre graining on the Haas allowed the McLaren driver to overtake his rival in the closing stages of the race.
The second red flag of the day, triggered by Hulkenberg’s teammate Kevin Magnussen, brought a third standing start that was followed by more chaos on the track and a third red flag.
Hulkenberg had emerged fourth from the turmoil that eliminated both Alpine drivers, but race control ultimately opted to roll back the running order for the final lap behind the safety car to the previous standing start, which left the Hulk seventh in the final results.
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