Driver’s eye: How Nico Hulkenberg managed to avoid disaster at Dutch Grand Prix

The near-miss between the two Audi drivers at Zandvoort was almost calamitous, and the unusual nature of how the crash was avoided has been detailed.

Gabriel Bortoleto spun at high speed going through the final corner at Zandvoort, with Nico Hulkenberg barely managing to avoid striking his teammate’s car.

Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg survived a remarkable Zandvoort near-miss

Two drivers were caught out by the remaining damp conditions that lingered around the Zandvoort Circuit after rain fell in the minutes before the race began.

While Max Verstappen spun exiting the high-speed banked Luyendijk corner and lost control to hit the outside barrier and eliminate himself from the race, his incident took place at the same time as another spinner slightly further back.

Earlier in the corner, Bortoleto had made a similar error and lost the rear of his R26. Directly behind him was Hulkenberg, who was staring down the barrel of hitting his teammate in a T-bone incident that could have had serious consequences for both drivers, beyond that of a mere race retirement.

However, Hulkenberg managed to avoid striking Bortoleto, having aimed directly for his wayward teammate as he weighed up diving to the right, the inside, before changing his mind. Slowing considerably as Bortoleto continued spinning in front of him, Hulkenberg committed to a change of direction to switch to the outside, on the left, and, somehow, managed to avoid hitting the sister Audi.

With Hulkenberg continuing without any damage, Bortoleto too was able to gather his car back up and continue, with the pack behind miraculously avoiding hitting either his car, or Max Verstappen’s crashed Red Bull a few metres away.

The avoidance may have looked like pure luck in the speed of the moment, but Audi team boss and former racer Allan McNish has pointed out how skills from both drivers played a part in ensuring they both survived the moment – skills that he believes not every driver possesses.

“I watch their two onboards, and live every second with them, which is why I’m turning grey very quickly at times!” McNish told media including PlanetF1.com after retreating to the Audi hospitality unit for a cup of tea before his flight home from the Netherlands.

“It was only on the replay where it was quite evident how close it was between our two cars.

“When I first saw Gabby [Bortoleto] spinning and then Nico coming out the other side of it, I didn’t quite realise that he had gone into the smoke.

“So it was a bit too much ‘Days of Thunder’ in terms of my heart, but, ultimately, both of them did a good job.”

The Scot was asked how impressed he had been by Hulkenberg’s last-gasp change of direction to avoid a collision, and about the judgment he had shown.

“There are two factors,” he said.

“One, when something’s happening ahead of you, there is a mental process, but there’s also an instinct, and it’s an instinctive knowing where to go and what to do, and some people have got it, some people don’t.

“When the car starts to spin, it goes in this particular direction, and it’s a trajectory. After that, there’s an element of instinctive judgment: how far do you go, in which direction?

“Really good job in that situation, and on a banking, for Nico to thread his way through it.”

With Hulkenberg having assessed the situation to calculate the route to take to minimise the chances of a collision, McNish also pointed to how Bortoleto had played a big role too by keeping the car in the centre of the banking, rather than losing control to suddenly block an escape route further up the banking.

“Certainly, with a car on a banking, that’s a different thing, though, because they tend to go up the way as opposed to down the way,” he said.

“Which was why I was very impressed with what Gabby was able to do to keep it in the middle of the circuit; anybody that’s seen NASCAR or IndyCar knows that that’s a skill, and not for it to spoon up into the wall.

“But, without doubt, whether it was instinct or whether it was skill and focus or anything else, I don’t know, but it was a bloody good save.”

What did the drivers say about the incident?

With Hulkenberg going on to score a stellar eighth place after a decisive drive saw him slice his way past drivers like Pierre Gasly and Arvid Lindblad in the battle of the midfield, the German driver was asked about the incident when he returned to the media pen.

Having been heard on team radio saying that he’d almost T-boned his teammate, Hulkenberg explained that it was a “bit wild”.

“The whole track was very dry. Just that corner stayed much wetter, and obviously sketchy, and it caught people out,” he said.

“It was very tricky, and I wasn’t sure where he was going to go, if he was going to roll up or roll down, so I was like waiting, hesitating, hesitating till the last moment, and I think a good portion of luck not to hit each other there, but that was pretty too close for comfort.”

With Bortoleto’s race having already been compromised by a poor start before his spin, his restart from P17 on the grid after the red flag saw him battle through to P13.

Slipping down the order before his spin had been down to two factors: a poor getaway as well as losing out in wheel-to-wheel, as McNish matter-of-factly pointed out.

“I don’t think starts have been our strongest point of the year so far, so it’s okay to bring it up!” he said, when asked by PlanetF1.com about what had happened on the opening lap.

“But it’s a point we’ve been working on and trying to improve, and I think they’ve now got it reasonable.

“But still, he did get a little bit mugged. He got a bit too much wheel spin. Where his actual start position was was the worst on the left-hand side because, where it had rained earlier on, it was also behind the grandstand, so it wasn’t getting the wind.

“So funnily enough, it was the dampest area as well. But yeah, he got a little bit mugged into Turn 1.”

Points were never likely after starting from near the back, and Bortoleto was affected by what he said were “bigger topic things” that had been on his car even before the race started, with him revealing that he would go through all the data with his team.

Understandably, he wasn’t in a tremendously good mood when it came to talking about what happened on the first lap, as he explained the spin from his perspective.

“Not great. Definitely not ideal,” he said.

“It was a little bit of a reaction to what I’ve seen ahead, but anyway, lost the car there, lost a few positions.

“I thought I was gonna crash in that moment, but I think the banking obviously helps you to keep on the low side. I don’t know, I just managed to do a 360.

“It was just that corner. If I’m very honest with you, it was like full wets at that place. I was on the downside of the banking, and I did a little reaction to the left when I saw big smoke coming ahead, and, when I did that, I just went as well.”

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