{"id":85603,"date":"2025-10-18T03:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T03:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/85603\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T03:23:08","slug":"kiwi-f1-driver-liam-lawsons-exasperation-at-fellow-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/85603\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwi F1 driver Liam Lawson’s exasperation at fellow driver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RB's<\/p>\n

\nLiam Lawson had his fastest time deleted for going wide at a corner.
\nPhoto: AFP \/ Lillian Suwanrumpha\n<\/p>\n

Kiwi Liam Lawson has found himself in the wars again, as he was left swearing at a rival’s driving during the sprint qualifying session at the US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

Lawson failed to progress to the top 10 for the third qualifying session for tomorrow’s sprint event, after he had his time deleted for going wide at a corner.<\/p>\n

He went wide to avoid Charles Leclerc, who was on a cooldown lap in the middle of the track.<\/p>\n

“What the f*** was that,” an exasperated Lawson said on the team radio.<\/p>\n

When told that he had exceeded track limits at turn 19, Lawson responded: “Maybe where the car was sitting in the middle of the f****** road.”<\/p>\n

Lawson had left it late to emerge from the garage and was the last driver to try to set a fast lap. Lewis Hamilton, who was also cooling down, had let him pass, but shortly after, the Kiwi had to take evasive action to avoid Leclerc.<\/p>\n

The end result will see Lawson start from 15 in tomorrow’s sprint. The US Grand Prix main race is on Monday NZT.<\/p>\n

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen beat Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri with a sizzling final lap to take pole position for the sprint race.<\/p>\n

Lawson had finished 15th in the first practice session with a time 1.325 seconds slower than Norris, who was fastest ahead of Nico Hulkenberg for Sauber, with Norris’ McLaren teammate Piastri third.<\/p>\n

“We got hit by traffic on our laps, so we’ll have a look tonight on whether we should have run earlier in the session, as opposed to later, which may have mitigated the issue,” Lawson said after the day’s racing.<\/p>\n

“However, there are positives to take away, as the car is very fast.<\/p>\n

“Points will be tricky, but we’ll be pushing for that and will continue to work on building a strong car for Sunday.”<\/p>\n

Lawson is in a battle to save his seat in the Red Bull stable for next year and will find out his Formula One future by the end of the month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Verstappen tops sprint qualifying<\/p>\n

In the sprint, Verstappen went around the Circuit of the Americas with a best effort of 1m 32.143s, after Norris – who set the pace in the first two phases and also the weekend’s sole practice session – had put his car on provisional pole.<\/p>\n

Norris was 0.071s slower than his Dutch rival, who has beaten both McLaren drivers in the last three regular grands prix, but remains 63 points behind championship leader Piastri.<\/p>\n

With eight points on offer to the winner of Saturday’s 100km race, he and Norris – 22 points behind Piastri – both have a good chance to reduce the gap to the Australian, who was three-tenths slower than his teammate.<\/p>\n

“It worked out well, but I still expect it to be a tough battle tomorrow in the sprint,” said four-time world champion Verstappen, who has been the king of the sprints, with 12 wins and now 10 poles, since the format was first introduced in 2021.<\/p>\n

“The wind was coming up and down, very gusty. The track is very bumpy as well, so the cars can easily step out on you in the high speed.<\/p>\n

“In a qualifying like that, you have to leave a few margins here and there, but for us, this has been a very good day.”<\/p>\n

McLaren have already won the constructors’ championship for the second year in a row and are chasing the team’s first drivers’ title since seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton opened his account in 2008.<\/p>\n

Norris started the main race on pole position last year, and will hope to make a clean and quick getaway, without tangling with either Verstappen or Piastri, as he did in the previous race in Singapore.<\/p>\n

“Of course, I would’ve loved to have been on pole, but it’s not a surprise for us to be just a bit slower than the Red Bull, but still pretty happy,” the Briton told reporters.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know how much I was off by, but a little couple of things here and there I could’ve improved on, and just caught a few bumps a little bit wrong, I’d say, but that’s just the difficulty of this track.”<\/p>\n

Piastri said he could have done better.<\/p>\n

“I think a pretty scruffy lap, to be honest,” added the Australia. “I just didn’t really get it together.<\/p>\n

“I feel a bit fortunate to be third, but I think the pace in the car is good.”<\/p>\n

Hulkenberg was an impressive fourth fastest, with George Russell – winner in Singapore – fifth for Mercedes and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso sixth.<\/p>\n

Williams had Carlos Sainz qualifying seventh, while Hamilton will start only eighth for Ferrari, but ahead of teammate Leclerc in 10th.<\/p>\n

Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli lines up 11th, one spot ahead of Lawson’s Racing Bulls teammate, Isack Hadjar.<\/p>\n

Yuki Tsunoda, who was promoted to the Red Bull line-up at the expense of Lawson earlier in the season, qualified 18th of the 20 drivers.<\/p>\n

– RNZ Sport\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson had his fastest time deleted for going wide at a corner. Photo: AFP \/ Lillian Suwanrumpha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-85603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85603","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=85603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}