Liam Lawson has revealed to apologising to Max Verstappen after the pair collided during second practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The two drivers made contact at Turn 14, with Verstappen’s Red Bull and Lawson’s Racing Bulls machinery both suffering damage. The incident triggered a red flag and left both drivers with one-place grid penalties for Sunday’s race at the Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The clash came as a surprise given the relationship between the two, with Verstappen having previously backed Lawson internally during his time in the Red Bull setup.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Lawson made clear he had gone to clear the air with the four-time F1 champion before Saturday’s running.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It’s not ideal,” said Lawson. “I went to see Max to apologise because what happened doesn’t need to happen.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to have that happen in the future. Obviously, right now, it’s not the best time, so yeah, it’s been a tricky day, honestly.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But I’m happy to drive the car. At the moment, I just like driving the car.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Despite qualifying eighth fastest, and dropping a place to ninth because of the penalty, the day ended even more sourly for Lawson, however, after being disqualified from qualifying for a technical breach.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tButton weighs in on Lawson future<\/p>\n
The clash has come at a sensitive moment for Lawson, with his Racing Bulls future still unresolved.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Junior driver Nikola Tsolov, who sits second in the F2 standings, took over Lawson’s car in first practice in Mexico as part of the team’s evaluation process.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Jenson Button, the 2009 F1 champion, has made it clear where his sympathies lie, pointing to Lawson’s season-long consistency over the promise Tsolov has shown.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It’s such a difficult one for the team to call,” said Button. “They obviously have the junior Tsolov coming through in F2, second in the championship, doing an amazing job.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But he’s also had inconsistencies through his years. He’s had moments of brilliance, but then he’s had other races where it’s not quite been there for him.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Maybe the team are excited about getting young new talent in the team, but I think Liam’s job this year has been really good. He’s been very consistent.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“They know what they’re getting with Liam, whereas with Tsolov, they don’t. So maybe they’re excited about that. I don’t know.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But if they’re there to score points at the moment, I would say Liam’s your guy.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson has revealed to apologising to Max Verstappen after the pair collided during second practice for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,42,3513,3516,3514,43,3512,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-648025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-headlines","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-news","tag-racing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648025","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=648025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}