Liam Lawson took out Hülkenberg: "Are you serious? Unbelievable!"

Many Formula 1 races have ended for drivers in the gravel trap. However, the gravel bed coming onto the track and taking out a Formula 1 racer was probably a first - as happened to Nico Hülkenberg's car in the Barcelona GP on Sunday.

It was a curious Grand Prix retirement that we can all colour in our calendars or diaries: Nico Hülkenberg retired from the Barcelona GP because a pebble flying through the air hit the emergency stop button of his Audi, of all things, and put the car out of action.

The unwitting and unintentional "culprit" was Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson: He took turn 12 a little too far to the outside, touched the gravel bed and kicked up pebbles in the process. One of these pebbles found the completely improbable way onto the "kill switch" of Hülkenberg's Audi and ended the German's race - virtually at the push of a button.

Lawson stunned after Hülkenberg hit the button

Asked about it by journalists after the race, the New Zealander was completely flabbergasted: "Are you serious? Unbelievable! That's incredibly unlucky! I didn't have a clue." Lawon said ironically: "If I could aim so perfectly, that would of course be impressive." The New Zealander was totally sorry about his accidental pebble attack: "I had no idea. I only realised that he was out of the race." Lawson himself finished eighth, scoring points for the second race in a row.

Mick Schumacher was caught out by a lump of rubber in 2020

Crazy: something similar to Hülkenberg happened to Mick Schumacher in 2020, but with a different "crime scene" and a different "murder weapon". When the later Formula 1 driver was still racing in Formula 2, he retired in Austria because a lump of rubber abrasion from the tyres came off the track, flew towards his Prema car and hit the trigger of his fire extinguisher, which then went off and ended the German's race. Schumacher wrote at the time: "Statistically speaking, it can happen every ten years that a piece of rubber comes loose and hits the small switch that triggers the fire extinguisher." It seems as if the German formula drivers have a magnetic attraction for such things...

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