Last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix claimed plenty of victims, but for Liam Lawson, the most frustrating blow came from an unlikely source: his own Racing Bulls team-mate.
Lawson was left nursing a damaged car after Arvid Lindblad arrived too late for the Turn 1 bottleneck at a safety-car restart, tagging the sister RB and sending Lawson into a spin.
The stewards examined the incident but decided Lindblad should escape without punishment, citing the lack of space and the chain reaction created by the chaos ahead.
That explanation did little to convince Lawson, who saw the incident rather differently.
Lawson left counting the cost
Lawson had already been compromised before the contact, suffering severe boost lag as the field charged towards Turn 1. With Esteban Ocon alongside him, he attempted to leave room, only for Lindblad to arrive from the other side.
“Coming into Turn 1, I had massive boost lag and I didn’t have any power, so Esteban was next to me,” the Kiwi explained.
“I tried to give him space and then I just got hit from my left so hard that it put a hole on the floor, and we couldn’t really fight after that. I don’t really know what happened.
“I’ve always tried to keep clear, and it’s been obviously aggressive at points this year, but… I don't know, going into Turn 1 there to try and fit through the middle of two cars like that, I don't think it was ever really going to happen.”
The damage effectively ended Lawson’s hopes of fighting for points, leaving him to settle for 12th while Lindblad recovered to finish seventh after a late drag race with Ocon.
That made the stewards’ decision particularly difficult for Lawson to swallow. He was hardly campaigning for his team-mate to be punished, but he could not reconcile the ruling with the damage inflicted on his car.
“Great for the team. Obviously I'm not going to go and protest my team-mate - but I don't understand it, because I got hit so hard that it put a hole in my floor,” he said.
“I was just turning for the corner, giving the guy space. From where I'm sitting I don't understand, but let's say it's great for the team.”
Lindblad apologizes - admits it was ‘complete chaos’
Lindblad, meanwhile, readily accepted that he had played a part in Lawson's misery and apologised to his team-mate after the race.
The rookie argued that the unusual nature of the restart had left the midfield in a particularly messy situation, with cars repeatedly accelerating and braking before finally reaching Turn 1.
“It was an absolute mess. I think as you see on almost all safety car restarts here in Baku it gets quite chaotic in Turn 1, I don't know what was happening at the front, but it was pretty poorly managed in the sense that the field wasn't bunched up,” he explained.
“From where we were, me and Esteban, we'd gone - or Ollie [Bearman] - about three times on the straight; we'd sort of gone and braked and gone again. So it was complete chaos, the battery wasn't in a good window because of that.
“Everyone braked a little bit too late in Turn 1 and I was going to make the move on Esteban and he moved in the last minute - basically moved under braking, so [I] had to take avoiding action, which meant I locked the front slightly and I hit Liam.”
Lindblad was therefore left with the awkward combination of apologising for the contact while also celebrating a valuable seventh-place finish.
The result was a significant one for Racing Bulls, even if the team was left wondering what might have been had both cars survived the opening-lap scramble.
“So obviously I've apologised to him already; I've apologised to the team because it's not something you want, because there could have been two of us in the points today, but also at the same time we take the result,” Lindblad concluded.
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