Lawson says Racing Bulls row was settled on track

Liam Lawson said Racing Bulls’ team-orders flashpoint at the Austrian Grand Prix was ultimately settled on track after he was told Arvid Lindblad would not attack, was passed anyway, and then regained the place to finish ninth.

The dispute unfolded while Lawson was managing brakes and tyres at the Red Bull Ring. After asking over the radio, “Am I going to be attacked?”, Lawson was told by race engineer Alexandre Iliopoulos: “Negative. Arvid will hold position, we are not fighting.” Lindblad still went for the move into Turn 4 and got ahead.

Lawson’s response was immediate. “Last f***ing time I’m listening, man. I lift off 50 metres and I get attacked,” he said over team radio, after backing off under instruction to protect the car.

Explaining the sequence after the race to PlanetF1.com and other media, Lawson said the plan had been working before the clash. “We had a strategy and executed it in the first stint,” he said. He added that he had then been told to manage the brakes and that “I wouldn’t be attacked, and I was.” Lawson also said the issue had been triggered by heavy brake temperatures early on, with the heat coming into the cockpit in the opening laps before the situation settled down.

What mattered for Lawson was that Racing Bulls’ pit strategy flipped the order back. He stayed close enough to Lindblad in the second stint to reclaim the position after the stops, turning the intra-team dispute into a double-points finish with Lawson ninth and Lindblad 10th.

By the time he reflected on it later, Lawson made clear he did not see it as an unresolved feud. “Honestly, there wasn’t really much to do with me,” he said at Silverstone to PlanetF1.com and other media. “It’s something that for me was resolved in the race. I got my position back, so honestly, by the time we finished the race, I was completely fine.”

He added that situations like that are part of Formula 1 inside a large organization, and that he had simply tried to do his part in the race. Lawson said any follow-up was “more of their discussion than mine,” although when asked immediately after Austria whether there would be internal talks, he replied: “Probably, I would say, yeah.”

Team principal Alan Permane moved quickly to calm the situation after the chequered flag. “Liam, it’s me. Calm down. You’re fine. We’ll deal with it. Don’t worry. Stay cool,” Permane told him over the radio, a sign that Racing Bulls still had to address why a clear instruction not to fight had broken down even though Lawson had already repaired the result himself.