Hulkenberg and Renault had "no weapons" to fight in Azerbaijan GP

Hulkenberg started 18th and finished a lowly 14th, ahead of only the two Williams drivers, having struggled for pace from the start of practice.

His team-mate Daniel Ricciardo had been running on the fringes of the top 10 before retiring after an incident with Daniil Kvyat on lap 32 of the 51-lap race.

The dive in performance came as a shock to the team after the Renault had been the fourth quickest car at the last two races in Bahrain and China.

"It didn't go very well, obviously," Hulkenberg told Autosport.

"No pace whatsoever, really slow. But I don't have the fix or the key for it.

"I felt I was giving it my best effort, and was driving it pretty hard and well.

"But if you see the pace of others and mine, it was going nowhere.

"I'm not sure what happened this weekend, it's been a bit like that since lap one.

"Maybe it's just one of those mysterious weekends, which I hope, but I felt like I had no weapons in the race.

"It's one of 21 weekends. Of course it didn't really go well, a bit better on Daniel's side, but we'll regroup and go again in Barcelona."

Ricciardo, who qualified 12th, said he was encouraged by his pace in the race prior to his retirement.

"All weekend we haven't really been on it," he said.

"That's why getting into the points would have been a fairly good recovery for us. That's why I'm obviously gutted not to pull that off.

"It looked like we had pretty good pace on that medium. On the soft we struggled at the beginning.

"If we finished the race I think we'd actually be quite upbeat about it."