{"id":905256,"date":"2026-09-25T18:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T18:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905256\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T18:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T18:18:10","slug":"liam-lawson-reveals-f1-drivers-respected-rules-after-lewis-hamilton-near-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905256\/","title":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson reveals F1 drivers \u2018respected\u2019 rules after Lewis Hamilton near-miss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Lawson<\/a> says the Formula 1 drivers \u201crespected\u201d the closing gap in qualifying, avoiding a repeat of his \u201cdangerous\u201d near-miss with Lewis Hamilton in practice in Baku.<\/p>\n

Lawson had a hairy moment in Thursday\u2019s second practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as he came screaming up behind the slow-moving Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Liam Lawson explains how F1 drivers avoided another dangerous Baku near-miss<\/p>\n

The New Zealander was on a flying lap whereas Hamilton, ahead of him on the track, was on an out-lap.<\/p>\n

Lawson<\/a> caught the Ferrari driver at Turn 19 and had to work his way around Hamilton at pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is so ****ing dangerous! Oh my god! Dude! That is so dangerous,\u201d Lawson complained to Racing Bulls.<\/p>\n

Hamilton blamed the extreme closing speed<\/a> between a driver ahead who is harvesting energy and a driver behind who is deploying energy, and said he was four seconds ahead of Lawson and then suddenly the Racing Bulls driver was on his rear wing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no guidelines of how big a gap you have, to understand the closing speed that you\u2019re gonna have, with the guy that\u2019s on the lap,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was four seconds ahead, I thought, this looks big enough, I go on the power, and once I got to T18, the speed deficit was huge and there was nowhere I could go at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drivers, though, was warned about this by F1 race director Rui Marques.<\/p>\n

In his updated notes on Thursday, he said: \u201cCars on out laps or slow laps should keep extreme left (i.e. not \u201coffline\u201d in middle of track) from exit T16 through to Entry T18.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe consider that Teams \/ Drivers can and should manage traffic gaps before T18 (going as slowly as required being on the extreme left) to ensure that they can transit between the apex of T18 and apex of T19 without impeding an approaching car that is trying to set a competitive lap time.<\/p>\n

\u201cCars on out laps or slow laps should keep \u2018extreme\u2019 right exit T19 until they achieve relevant speed to open the following lap.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, though, isn\u2019t what happened on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The drivers spoke about the incident during Thursday evening\u2019s driver briefing, and while no details have been released, Lawson says everyone respected the rules during qualifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we spoke about it a lot in the meeting,\u201d Lawson told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Baku.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody had a good idea of sort of the gap you needed after Turn 16 to get through 18, 19, and honestly, looked like everyone respected that today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson qualified 12th on his return to Racing Bulls after three races filling in for Isack Hadjar at Red Bull.<\/p>\n

More on qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix<\/p>\n

Russell storms to Azerbaijan GP pole with huge 0.837s margin, Antonelli crashes<\/a><\/p>\n

Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2026 \u2013 Qualifying F1 results (Baku)<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe lap was very good up until the last couple of corners, and just struggled with overheating,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust didn\u2019t get a tow as well, which is really powerful here, especially for us this weekend as we\u2019ve been pretty slow down the straights.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, so it\u2019s frustrating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think we\u2019ve done quite a good job with the car, and looking back to some tracks earlier in the year, or tracks where we\u2019ve been quite competitive, I actually feel like we\u2019ve made a step with the car. <\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, we\u2019re just a lot worse now down the straights, to be honest, compared to some of the other teams with other power units, especially on these tracks with long straights. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, it\u2019s pretty frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher<\/p>\n

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp<\/a> to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.<\/p>\n

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel<\/a> for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!<\/p>\n

Read Next:\u00a0F1\u2019s 2030 V8 engine: What we know about the next power unit rules<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson says the Formula 1 drivers \u201crespected\u201d the closing gap in qualifying, avoiding a repeat of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,54428,817,813,816,818,3352,44,85],"class_list":["post-905256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-azerbaijan-grand-prix","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-liam-lawson","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}