No penalty for Arvid Lindblad, Liam Lawson is stunned: Racing Bulls row

The 19-year-old Englishman Arvid Lindblad finished seventh at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, his second-best F1 result after P6 in Monaco. But the Briton had a guilty conscience after the Baku GP.

In the chaos caused by Colapinto’s collision with Gasly (who was then pushed into Norris), Lindblad ended up nudging his Racing Bulls team-mate Liam Lawson – of all people – into a spin. The New Zealander could only manage twelfth place.

After the Grand Prix, Liam complained: “As I went into Turn 1, I had no power, so Esteban Ocon was right next to me. I tried to make way for him, and then I was rammed so hard from the left that it left a hole in the floor of my car. I’m not quite sure what happened there.”

“I’ve always tried to leave space, and things have obviously been quite aggressive in some places this year, but I don’t know – trying to squeeze through between two cars like that in Turn 1? I don’t think that would ever have really worked.”

The young Lindblad said: “As you see here in Baku with almost every restart after a safety car period, things always get pretty chaotic at Turn 1. I don’t know what happened right at the front, but it was rather poorly managed in that the field wasn’t close together. From our position – myself, Ocon and Bearman – we set off about three times on the straight, braked and set off again. So it was complete chaos, and as a result the battery wasn’t in the optimal range.»

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“Everyone braked a bit too late at Turn 1, and I was just about to overtake Esteban when he swerved at the last second – basically whilst braking – so I had to swerve too, which caused me to lock up the front wheels slightly and crash into Liam.”

“I apologised to him, of course, and I also apologised to the team, because on that day both of them could have finished in the top ten.”

The stewards reviewed the incident and concluded that it did not warrant a penalty, “due to the limited space available to Lindblad, caused by the incident ahead of him”.