Terrifying near-miss at F1 Canadian Grand Prix: “Had my eyes closed, bracing…”

The scary near-miss between Nico Hulkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda at last weekend’s F1 Canadian Grand Prix has been recounted.

RB driver Tsunoda spun, after losing control of his car, across the grass at Turn 8.

Quickly approaching out of Turn 9 was the Haas of Hulkenberg.

Somehow, the cars missed each other.

Hulkenberg’s perspective was: “I just don’t know…

“I tried to react, tried to stop and tried to avoid him.

“But it must have been by a few millimetres – it felt very, very close.

“So I have closed my eyes already bracing for the impact, but managed somehow luckily to escape it.”

Hulkenberg eventually finished 11th, a place ahead of teammate Kevin Magnussen.

They had been running in fourth and seventh much earlier in the race.

Magnussen was hindered by a slow pit stop when he changed to intermediate tyres.

Magnussen explained his annoyance: “I didn’t feel like we got the best out of it.

“With all the opportunity that the race offered, we didn’t seem to capitalise on that, so that’s disappointing.

“So we’ll review it and try to understand it. Right now it’s all a bit blurry.

“There was lots of opportunity, that’s for sure, and we didn’t get any points so we've got to look into things.

“We had one very slow and one medium-slow [pit stop].

“And then I also think we pitted for inters off the full wets too early and had to take another inter, which felt unnecessary.

“But I have to look into it properly to make sure I’m right in saying that.

“Yeah, it felt like there was something coming there in the beginning of the race and nothing to show for it.”

Hulkenberg added: “The first 10 laps were going really well.

“But then it dried out and all came undone again. But yeah, that was that.

“We knew about that risk – not risk, but that scenario. But a clean race, no mistakes at least.”