Nico Hulkenberg: Spanish GP qualifying crash 'not my finest moment'

Hulkenberg slid across a gravel trap early in Q1 and clipped a tyre wall just hard enough to damage the front wing.

He managed to return to the pits, with the wing dragging underneath the car. When he resumed after repairs he was unable to make it into Q2.

His Renault team-mate Daniel Ricciardo qualified 10th, but drops back three places thanks to a grid penalty for his incident with Daniil Kvyat in Azerbaijan.

"Just a little mistake," Hulkenberg said when asked about the incident by Autosport.

"A little lock up on Turn 4, probably wanting a little bit too much too soon. No one to blame but myself.

"Obviously it's one corner where you can't really recover off line, there's no grip. And then the gravel and the barrier comes to you.

"So unfortunately I went off and damaged the front wing and some stuff on the car, and it was difficult to recover from there.

"It was definitely not one of my finest moments.

"We changed the front wing, but it was the same spec. The whole car was stone blasted, so there were quite a lot of bits and bobs missing."

Hulkenberg conceded that he could be in for a tough Sunday afternoon.

"It's not going to be a walk in the park," he said.

"Obviously you need pace to do something with strategy, like we've seen in Bahrain.

"If you have pace, you can overtake, so we need to see where we come out tomorrow.

"So far this weekend the midfield in the long runs looked incredibly tight.

"But we'll put the racing hat on and see what we can get out of the day."

Regarding the difficult behaviour of the Renault in Spain, he added: "It's still tricky. The balance is not that consistent, and it changes around even during a session with outside conditions changing, so it's tough to stay on top of the balance.

"Our operating window and envelope seems quite narrow and sharp, so it makes it tough to get the rhythm sometimes, and the consistency."