Kiwi driver Liam Lawson has shown he’s not there to make friends as he chases a fulltime drive in Formula One.
Racing in his second event since replacing Aussie Daniel Ricciardo in the Racing Bulls seat, Lawson finished a disappointing 16th in Mexico after colliding with Red Bull rival Sergio Perez in the middle of the race.
In a battle for 10th spot between two drivers expected to be fighting for the second Red Bull seat next year, neither of them was willing to give up any space.
So palpable was the tension between the two drivers, Lawson was seen giving Perez the finger when he overtook him on the main straight later in the race.
But Perez was fuming on lap 18 when he came wheel to wheel in the battle for 10th place with Lawson, and the Kiwi emerged victorious, with the Mexican heard telling his race engineer “what the f*** is this idiot doing?”.
In the post-race interviews, Perez was still laying the blame on Lawson.
“I had the position, I was ahead into Turn 5 – he was off the track getting back, I wasn’t expecting him just to carry on straight.
“He took the whole side of the car off, but I don’t think it’s his fault because he doesn’t get any penalty.
“He did the same to Fernando [Alonso] last weekend, he did the same to Franco [Colapinto] at the end of the race and no penalty, so maybe depends who you are [in terms of] the penalty you get.”
Lawson’s front wing was clipped by Williams driver Colapinto late in the race which saw him drop back down the field again before finishing ahead of Perez.
Asked if he would discuss this with Lawson, Perez answered: “Yeah, I just told him I think we ruined both our races – I was ahead, there was no need to come together at that point. It was Lap 11 of the race, just compromising our race, both of us. I don’t think it was a very clever move.”
Lawson said it was a tough outing after collecting two competition points with a ninth a week earlier in Austin.
“A frustrating race, not the result we wanted. With the speed we had this weekend, we could have scored points. It’s very disappointing to come away with nothing this weekend, especially when we had a package that was strong,” Lawson said.
“We needed that clean air and unfortunately spent the whole race behind the gearbox of another car. We had incidents all throughout and we tried the strategy that worked last week but it just didn’t work today. We’ll learn from that, and we’ll try and do a better job next week.”
Racing Bulls Team principal Laurent Mekies backed the Kiwi’s start to the race before he got stuck in traffic.
“Liam was on an inverted strategy to try and jump some of the cars ahead of us. He had a strong first stint and some good fights throughout the race, but it did not really work for him, as he found a lot of traffic in the second part of the race. The contact with Colapinto pretty much ended any slight chance to fight for points.”
The Formula One season continues next weekend in Brazil with a sprint race on Sunday morning NZT, followed by the feature race on Monday.
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