(Motorsport-Total.com) – Liam Lawson admits that at the start in Australia last weekend, he firmly expected Franco Colapinto to crash into him, but an insane reaction from the Argentine saved both from a serious accident. “That was extremely impressive of him,” says Lawson.
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The New Zealander had only gotten off the line at a snail’s pace at the start in Melbourne, which led to a dangerous situation. Because a lot of fast cars were rushing up from behind, one of which was Colapinto, who could only see Lawson at the last moment and managed to steer his car around the Racing Bulls with a top-notch reflex – including contact with the wall.
“To be honest, I had already prepared myself for the impact in the car at that moment,” Lawson describes. “I looked in the mirror and saw his car to my left when he was already very close. I was sure he was going to ram me, and then he suddenly shot past me on the right.”
“He reacted incredibly well, and I was very lucky,” says the New Zealander. “Of course, we have to do everything we can to ensure we don’t have these problems at the start again, because that cost us the race.”
Racing Bulls has understood the problem
Because Lawson was last after the slow start. He said in Australia that he suddenly had no power when starting – it only suddenly appeared after a few seconds. “From my side, I honestly can’t do much in the cockpit,” he suggests that the problem was more on the car’s side.
“The problem we had now, we didn’t really know it like that. It might have occurred once or twice before, but we absolutely didn’t expect it at the race start,” says Lawson, who emphasizes that his team is working on it: “Now we understand it completely, and it’s about finding a solution so it doesn’t happen again.”
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“Sometimes things like this probably have to happen first so that you can learn from them and understand what’s going on.”
“At the moment it’s quite dangerous”
But even if the Racing Bulls get their starting procedure under control, starts remain a hot topic in Formula 1 at the moment, and quite a few are convinced that it is only a matter of time before a serious accident really occurs: “If it continues like this, yes,” Lawson nods.
“What happened at the weekend can so easily go wrong. If Franco hadn’t avoided it so well, it would have been a really serious accident. At the moment it’s quite dangerous,” he says.
“It’s just damn complicated. You see us standing there for ten seconds trying to initiate our starting procedure, and the starts are extremely inconsistent. It’s a new car, sure, but at the moment it’s really tricky. We’ll talk about it anyway. There are many things on the cars at the moment that are not yet optimal, but we will steadily improve there.”
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