Liam Lawson had an eventful São Paulo Grand Prix. He had a great start from fifth on the grid, but had to back out to not hit his team mate Yuki Tsunoda at the start. He managed to stay relatively close to Charles Leclerc and later Max Verstappen, before being spun around by Oscar Piastri, which resulted in a ten second time penalty for the McLaren driver.
“Obviously, what could have been without that,” Lawson reacted to that incident. “We lost a lot of time in the red flag, that was just really unlucky timing. Alpine made the right call there by staying out.”
The RB driver lost a few spots by stopping for full wets, right before the red flag came after Franco Colapinto’s crash, although he feels it was the right time given the downpour occuring at that moment.
“Honestly I didn’t think we would have made another lap on the inter. It was so wet, so fair play to the guys who did stay out. Something I’ll learn from.
“I think initially I probably jumped the gun a little bit and thought it was too wet but I’ll learn from that going forward.”
Despite having a “great battle” with Lewis Hamilton and, again, Sergio Pérez, keeping both of them behind en route to a ninth place, Lawson was mostly relieved to have survived the relentless Brazilian rain.
“I nearly crashed the car probably ten times. It was very sketchy, but I think obviously the most important thing was staying on the track and fortunately we were able to do that.
“We just dropped a little at the end there. I had good pace early on in the stint, but I just couldn’t really use it.”
The Kiwi was under investigation for the shenanigans at the abandoned start, but there was eventually no further action as he just followed the cars ahead.
“Honestly I followed the queue,” Lawson explained. “I didn’t really know there was a thing until 30 seconds ago.”
The unfortunate timing of the red flag combined with Alpine’s gutsy call to stay out meant the Enstone-based team jumped to sixth in the constructors’ standings, leapfrogging RB. But with just a five-point gap between sixth and eighth, there is still all to fight for in the upcoming triple header, Lawson said.
“I think obviously they made the most of this.
“It’s very close, 5 points it’s totally doable for us, so we’ll obviously focus on trying to score some good points on the last triple header.”
