Hamilton calls for change after high-speed near-miss with Lawson at Baku

Lewis Hamilton has called for changes to Formula 1’s engine management system after a high-speed near-miss with Liam Lawson resulted in him receiving a reprimand from the stewards.

Hamilton was found to have ignored instructions from the race director to stay off the racing line between Turn 17 and Turn 20 in the final sector of the track. These turns are taken flat-out and are blind owing to the placement of the barriers, which wind their way to the wide-open front straight.

Lawson, on a fast lap, encountered the slow-moving Hamilton with a speed difference of around 42mph and was forced to lift off the throttle and take evasive action to avoid a potentially enormous crash.

Hamilton explained afterwards that he was caught out by his car suddenly running out of electrical charge, which effectively left him in the wrong place traveling at the wrong speed.

“I was 4s ahead basically,” he said. “I went into the last corner pushing. I could see him, but I thought the gap was enough. I got onto full throttle and then literally as we got into [Turn] 18, the car just died and he swallowed up the gap massively. That could happen to anyone.”

Though drivers have been dealing with the particularities of the hybrid engines all year, Hamilton said the circumstances that could combine to create a dangerous situation change at each circuit.

“Basically with the rules that the FIA gave us this year, when you come into the weekend, there’s no data or simulation to say, ‘Okay, when you come to the last corner and you go to full throttle and you have 500bhp less than the car behind you on a lap, this is the gap you need to have before they get on your [tail]’,” he explained. “They don’t tell you the closing speed that you’re going to have.

“I think it’s [about] having clear guidelines from them, because none of the drivers want to get in trouble. None of them are trying to get in the way of anybody. Our sole goal is to get out of the way and then also get our lap. So I think we’ll talk about it in the driver briefing, about what we can do.”

The 2018 Azerbaijan winner suggested the recharge-discharge limits of the battery should be adjusted at high-risk parts of the circuit for practice and qualifying sessions to avoid sudden losses of power.

“What they should do is on a single lap, when we’re doing a push lap, we get max power out of the last corner, but when we come through 19, it resets, and then you have a little more power,” he said.

“There should just be nobody going slow ever through 18 and 19. You should, even if you’re on a slow lap, still have to go flat out through 18 and 19 with full power. That would mean that no-one is ever going slow through that section. I think that’s something we’ll talk about in the drivers briefing.”

Hamilton finished the day fifth. He was 1.318s off the pace but only 0.192s behind teammate Charles Leclerc, who was a place ahead of him.

“The car generally feels okay,” he said. “We’re just lacking speed, so we’ve just got to look into why that is.”