Lawson confused by lack of Lindblad penalty, but won't protest

Arvid Lindblad’s lack of penalty for hitting his teammate in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix might have been good news for Racing Bulls, but it left Liam Lawson confused by the decision.

Lawson was side-by-side with Esteban Ocon into Turn 1 on a race restart when Lindblad locked up and hit the left rear of his teammate’s car, spinning the New Zealander and causing damage. The stewards opted to take no further action and Lindblad was able to pass Ocon for seventh place on the final lap, ensuring Racing Bulls scored six points.

“Great for the team,” Lawson said. “Obviously I'm not going to go and protest my teammate, but I don't know, I don't understand it because I got hit so hard that it put a hole in my floor. And I was just turning for the corner giving the guy space, so from where I'm sitting I don't understand but let's say it's great for the team.”

Explaining the contact from his point of view, Lawson says he was leaving room for Ocon on his inside when he was hit.

“Obviously we were all coming into Turn 1, I had massive boost lag and I didn't have any power. So Esteban was next to me and I tried to give him space and then I just got hit from my left so hard that it put a hole in the floor and then we couldn't really fight after that.

“So I don't really know what happened, but obviously from where I'm sitting there's not really space to go through the middle there so it's not ideal.

“Obviously on the positive we scored points as a team. We got very, very lucky that Alpine didn’t, honestly. But I've always tried to keep it fair, and it’s been obviously aggressive at points this year but going into Turn 1 there to try and fit through the middle of two cars like that, I don't think it was ever going to happen.

“He came to apologize. He locked up and he had nowhere to go. So I need to watch it but it's not ideal.”

Lindblad claims his lock-up was triggered by Ocon moving in the braking zone, despite the onboard footage showing the Frenchman holding his line on the inside a number of car lengths ahead of Lindblad.

“It was an absolute mess, I think as you see on almost all Safety Car restarts here in Baku it gets quite chaotic in Turn 1,” Lindblad said. “Honestly I don’t know what was happening at the front but it was pretty poorly managed in the sense that the field wasn’t bunched up. From where we were - me and Esteban, or Ollie [Bearman] - we’d gone about three times on the straight, we’d sort of gone, broke, and gone again.

“So it was complete chaos, the battery wasn’t in a good window because of that, and then everyone broke a little bit too late in Turn 1, I was going to make the move on Esteban and he moved at the last minute, basically moved under braking so I had to take avoiding action which meant I locked the fronts slightly and I hit Liam.

“Obviously I apologized to him already, I apologized to the team because it’s not something you want. Because there could have been two of us in the points today, but also at the same time we take the result in a sense … massive points is absolutely amazing.”