Liam Lawson admitted that he didn\u2019t understand what team mate Arvid Lindblad was hoping to achieve in a move that saw the Racing Bulls pair make contact in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with the New Zealander summarising that \u201cit sucks for our race\u201d.<\/p>\n
After both drivers recovered from being knocked out in Q2, they found themselves in contention for a double points finish heading into the final part of the race, having capitalised on a Safety Car to pit for fresh tyres.<\/p>\n
Coming from behind, Lindblad<\/a> took the inside line at Turn 1 on the restart and tagged the rear of Lawson<\/a>\u2019s car, sending him into a spin on the run-off area. Lawson dropped down the order as a result and finished P12 upon his return to the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked for his view on the incident, he said: \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t really know what gap he was looking for in the middle of both of us going into Turn 1 \u2013 I just don\u2019t understand it. Obviously great points for the team but it sucks for our race.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindblad, meanwhile, believed that he had nowhere else to go, as he explained: \u201cAt the back where we were, we\u2019d gone about three times on the straight before we actually went because the field wasn\u2019t bunched up well at all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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\u2019ve done. I came and immediately apologised to him, and obviously I apologised to the team because there could\u2019ve been two of us up there today.\u201d<\/p>\n The 19-year-old was able to continue in the top 10 and ultimately placed P7 after passing Haas<\/a>\u2019 Esteban Ocon<\/a> over the line, with a miniscule 0.030s separating the pair.<\/p>\n It marked an important result in the midfield battle<\/a> against Alpine<\/a>, especially as Pierre Gasly<\/a> and Franco Colapinto<\/a> retired from the race in Baku<\/a> following a more detrimental intra-team collision<\/a> that happened at almost the same time as the one for Racing Bulls<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the bright side, let\u2019s take the points,\u201d Lindblad said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a very difficult weekend \u2013 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\u2019m very happy.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we had some fortune on our side. The pace is important but it\u2019s the points that matter in the end. We scored the points today.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main focus is to understand why we have struggled this week, why we haven\u2019t been faster, but of course we\u2019re absolutely over the moon to score solid points on a weekend that we aren\u2019t fast. It\u2019s always about damage limitation when you\u2019re struggling on a weekend. There\u2019s nothing more we could\u2019ve done today, so it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the unfortunate conclusion to his race, Lawson agreed with his team mate, adding: \u201cWe got very lucky today \u2013 they were much quicker than us and they have been all weekend. We need to try and turn it around next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson admitted that he didn\u2019t understand what team mate Arvid Lindblad was hoping to achieve in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-612614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612614","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=612614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}