Hulkenberg was quick throughout practice on his fulltime comeback, finishing FP2 in an encouraging fifth place.
Having made it through to Q3 he eventually qualified 10th.
However, he tumbled down to 14th on the first lap after a touch with the Alpine of Esteban Ocon, reporting to the team: “Possible some contact at the front, but I’m not sure.”
While the engineers were checking the data, he added: “There was some sort of a knock, but it feels OK now.”
The team opted not to replace the nose at Hulkenberg’s first pitstop. However with his handling deteriorating and his tyres suffering, it did so at his second stop on lap 26.
That gave the German a more competitive car for the final 30 laps, but by then he was out of contention for points.
He finished an unrepresentative 15th, having also picked up two track limits penalties that added 15 seconds to his race time but didn't impact his position.
"A tricky race, especially the first half,” said Hulkenberg. “Apparently I had some contact with someone on Turn 1 or Turn 2 on lap one, which I didn't even really notice.
“I was trying, I was a bit squeezed in Turn 1, I was trying to avoid everyone, but apparently obviously there was some contact and then consequently some damage which was very compromising to my race because I lost a lot of downforce. It's like going to a fight but without weapons!
“So that's a bit frustrating and I think I had quite some stuff missing from the front wing and lost a lot of load with that, and grip of course.
"It made the first half of the race very, very tough. I was just going through my tyres like a hot knife through butter.
“I think in the middle of the race we decided there's no point continuing like that, so I pitted for a new front wing. Vicious circle then, lots of blue flags, it was just going backwards from there."
Hulkenberg stressed the damage had compromised any lessons he might have learned from completing a race distance with the car.
“Tricky to say because the first half is so blurry for me now,” he said of how much he'd learned. “It was just a survival, to be honest and then very difficult.
“I was running around with a damaged car, which had a lot less downforce than it should have had as a healthy car.
“I was very relieved when we pitted it for the new front wing, and the car suddenly came back to being normal. But by then I had lost so much ground already that it was tough to recover.
“So first half not much to learn, because that was not the real car. The second half the race for sure I take my learnings from there. Which is for me, my feeling, my findings and emotions about that, and I'll process those, and regroup in two weeks.”
Asked how it felt to be back on the grid, he said: "I'm very happy to be honest. It's a known feeling. It's exciting. It's the start of a long year, a long season.
“Obviously Saturday was very good, Sunday was not too good. But we take the findings and the learnings.
"And I expected that it's not going to be all great from the beginning. It's always a steep learning curve, and learn as you go.
“Of course in the detail, there's differences, but at the end of the day, a grand prix is still 300kms, the cars are still fast, still starting with 110kgs. So it's different, but it's not so different as well."
