Liam Lawson Admits He ‘Just Doesn’t Understand’ the Arvid Lindblad Clash That Wrecked His Baku Race
- Liam Lawson says he still doesn’t understand what Racing Bulls teammate Arvid Lindblad was trying to do when the pair made contact at a restart in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
- The clash spun Lawson into the run-off area and put a hole in his floor, dropping him to a final finish of P12 on his return to the team.
- Lindblad recovered to finish seventh, passing Haas driver Esteban Ocon by just 0.030 seconds, in a result that swung the midfield battle against a struggling Alpine.
“It Sucks for Our Race”
Liam Lawson said he did not understand what teammate Arvid Lindblad was trying to achieve in a move that saw the two Racing Bulls drivers make contact in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, summing the incident up simply: “it sucks for our race.”
Both drivers had been knocked out in Q2 the day before, leaving them to fight their way forward from the back on race day. By the closing stages, both found themselves in contention for a double points finish after capitalising on a Safety Car to pit for fresh tyres.
Baku produced two Safety Car periods in a race that also saw a three-car collision take out Lando Norris and both Alpine drivers, and a late crash for Valtteri Bottas on the final lap as George Russell held off Max Verstappen by one tenth of a second for victory. The Lawson and Lindblad contact happened at almost the same point in the race as the incident that ended Norris’s afternoon, part of a chaotic spell around the restarts that reshaped the finishing order across the field.
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Contact at the Restart
Coming from behind on the restart, Lindblad took the inside line at Turn 1 and tagged the rear of Lawson’s car, sending him into a spin on the run-off area. Lawson dropped down the order, eventually finishing P12 on his return to the team after a spell driving for Red Bull. The contact also left a hole in the floor of his car, damage that would have cost him more positions had the race gone on much longer.
Asked for his view on the incident, Lawson said: “I need to watch it. We were all coming into Turn 1 on the restart and I just got smoked from my left. It put a hole in my floor as well.”
He continued: “I don’t really know what gap he was looking for in the middle of both of us going into Turn 1, I just don’t understand it. Obviously great points for the team but it sucks for our race.”
Lindblad’s Side of the Story
Lindblad, for his part, said he had nowhere else to go. “At the back where we were, we’d gone about three times on the straight before we actually went because the field wasn’t bunched up well at all,” he explained. “It was just an absolute mess going into Turn 1. Everyone was moving a lot. Obviously a bit of a shame to hit Liam but if you see the incident, you can see there’s not much I could’ve done. I came and immediately apologised to him, and obviously I apologised to the team because there could’ve been two of us up there today.”
The 19-year-old was able to continue inside the top 10 and finished seventh after passing Haas driver Esteban Ocon over the line, with just 0.030 seconds separating the pair at the flag.
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Points That Mattered in the Midfield
The result carried extra significance in the midfield fight against Alpine, whose Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto both retired from the race following a separate collision between the Alpine teammates that happened at almost the same point in the race as the Racing Bulls contact.
Colapinto had misjudged his braking at the same restart and hit the side of Gasly’s car, sending it into Norris’s McLaren. Both Alpines and Norris were forced to retire, while Racing Bulls came through the same phase of the race with a car in the points on each side of the garage, though the manner of getting there left Lawson unhappy.
“On the bright side, let’s take the points,” Lindblad said. “It’s been a very difficult weekend, we struggled to get out of Q1, to be honest. To be here now scoring good points whilst our competitors are out is obviously amazing considering the struggles, so I’m very happy.”
He added: “Obviously we had some fortune on our side. The pace is important but it’s the points that matter in the end. We scored the points today. The main focus is to understand why we have struggled this week, why we haven’t been faster, but of course we’re absolutely over the moon to score solid points on a weekend that we aren’t fast. It’s always about damage limitation when you’re struggling on a weekend. There’s nothing more we could’ve done today, so it was great.”
Lawson Keeps Perspective
Even with the frustration of losing out to his own teammate, Lawson accepted that Racing Bulls had come out of Baku better off than their pace over the weekend suggested they deserved.
“We got very lucky today, they were much quicker than us and they have been all weekend,” Lawson said. “We need to try and turn it around next week.”
Lawson’s Baku weekend came only a day after he returned to Racing Bulls, having spent recent races filling in for an injured Isack Hadjar at Red Bull. With Hadjar back in that seat for Baku, Lawson was back alongside Lindblad for a race that turned on contact between the two of them rather than a rival team. Instead of a clean return to his old seat, his weekend became defined by the car sitting in the other Racing Bulls garage.
Racing Bulls leave Azerbaijan on 83 points in the constructors’ championship, 15 clear of Alpine on 68, a gap that stood at just nine points before the race. Haas sit seventh on 27 points, with Audi and Williams behind them, so every point in that fight has a direct say in where the prize money lands at the end of the year.
Both Racing Bulls drivers now turn their attention to the Bahrain Grand Prix, which continues Formula 1’s run of three races in three weekends at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. Lindblad, still a rookie this season, has made a habit of turning difficult qualifying weekends into productive Sundays, and Baku fit that pattern even before his teammate became part of the story.
For Lawson, the result is a reminder that a points finish for the team does not always translate into a good weekend personally. He arrived back in the Racing Bulls car aiming to build some form heading into the final stretch of the season, and instead leaves Baku having to sort out exactly what his own teammate was thinking on the restart that put him out of position for good.
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