A first-lap retirement at Silverstone ended a double-header that had kicked off in fine style for Liam Lawson in Austria.
The Kiwi driver took his second points finish of the year at the Red Bull Ring, finishing in sixth place, but his British weekend ended on the first lap after coming out on the wrong side of a racing incident.
Liam Lawson: British GP retirement ‘part of racing’
Lining up in 15th place for Sunday’s race start at Silverstone, Lawson opted for the safer intermediate tyre option as several drivers pitted for slicks at the end of the formation lap.
But this more circumspect decision came to naught on the first lap when, sticking around the outside of Haas’ Esteban Ocon through Turn 4, Lawson’s left-rear wheel was tagged by the French driver and he was spun off into retirement.
The incident was triggered by the fact Ocon was hemmed in on both sides, with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda having snuck up the inside of the Haas approaching the apex. With nowhere for Ocon to go, he couldn’t give Lawson more space.
As a first-lap retirement, Lawson was quickly back in the paddock to ruefully reflect on his short-lived race; a stark contrast to the high of finishing sixth just a week prior.
“Unfortunately, I can’t see two cars next to me. We came out of Turn 4, and I just saw Esteban. He was next to me through T4, so I need to look at it and see,” Lawson told media, including PlanetF1.com.
“That’s motorsport, that’s Formula 1, I’ve been through it many times and I’m sure I’ll go through it many more times, but yeah, it’s part of racing.”
With the conditions proving very tricky in the early stages as the slick tyre gamble backfired for those who tried it, Lawson’s teammate Isack Hadjar made it a double DNF for the Faenza-based Racing Bulls team as he crashed, unsighted, into the back of Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes. He was uninjured.
“I sympathised with everybody out there in those conditions,” Lawson said.
“When you have races like these, we normally love it. It’s an opportunity for us to have a very strong race.
“Look at Brazil last year [where Lawson raced to ninth], it doesn’t so much matter about the car you’re in. You can make something happen. At the same time, it’s very, very tricky, and that’s why these opportunities are there.”
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The Kiwi revealed he had come very close to making the same slick tyre call as Hadjar, but the much wetter final sector meant he opted for caution.
“Watching the F2 and F3, it took quite a while for the track to dry, so I think we made the right call,” he said.
“I had a good start. We would have had a very fast car in those conditions. It suits what we were running this weekend. I was really just trying to survive, I wasn’t trying to do anything aggressive but, yeah, that’s it.”
With just two points finishes in the first 12 races of the F1 2025 season, Lawson occupies 16th place in the Drivers’ Championship on 12 points. Hadjar, who came into F1 with Racing Bulls this year as a rookie, has had the better first half as he’s scored 21 points with some eye-catching drives, and Lawson said he needs more weekends like Austria to feel he’s maximising the car.
“Score points. Just score more points,” he said of his hopes for the upcoming races.
“I mean, we missed points today. We’ve had a very fast car recently and missed points. Austria was great, but one great weekend is not enough. We need to keep doing it.”
Achieving this, he explained, will be down to coming into a weekend with the car already in a good window, rather than spending the practice sessions chasing a setup.
“It’s very, very close [in the midfield at the moment,” he said, “and, quite often, it’s more about how we baseline the car at the start of the weekend, and try and come up with the best balance, because it’s tricky in three sessions to transform a car.
“We need to arrive at the track with a good package.”
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