Liam Lawson has insisted the opening lap of the Dutch Grand Prix was “just impossible” in the mixed conditions, as he had the perfect view of Max Verstappen’s frightening crash.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Heavy rainfall ahead of the Grand Prix made for an interesting opening lap at Zandvoort, as the first half of the circuit remained dry while the final sector was wet.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
All drivers opted for slick tyres at the start and gingerly made their way through the final corners; however, Verstappen tried to push too early and crashed heavily at the last corner.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Lawson was directly behind his Red Bull team-mate and saw the heavy impact, which the New Zealander did well to avoid.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It triggered an immediate red flag as debris from Verstappen’s car was scattered across the circuit, in what was a saddening way for the local hero’s probable final home race to end.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As for Lawson, he ended up finishing a lonely seventh and conceded that he had zero confidence on the opening lap in the tricky conditions.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Asked how difficult the opening lap was, Lawson told select media, including RacingNews365: “Just impossible.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I mean, the whole first half of the track was dry, and then the last two corners were completely soaked.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“So yeah, really easy, obviously, to do that [crash] when you have this much power and are on a slick tyre.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But yeah, for us, I really lifted out of it, sort of, because honestly, I had no confidence in knowing how much grip we were going to have there, and I think Max was probably trying to get close and make an overtake, but just lost it.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson has insisted the opening lap of the Dutch Grand Prix was “just impossible” in the mixed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,3513,3516,3514,111,139,69,3512,213],"class_list":["post-578178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}