Lindblad says he helped Lawson's P8 strategy call

Liam Lawson finished eighth at the Hungarian Grand Prix after Racing Bulls abandoned its original one-stop plan and split strategies, with team-mate Arvid Lindblad saying he had warned before and during the race that a two-stopper was the right call.

Lawson became the highest-placed driver outside McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari at the Hungaroring after Racing Bulls reacted when Nico Hulkenberg forced the issue on strategy. The team pitted Lawson for a second stop on Lap 42, while Lindblad stayed committed to the one-stop and eventually came home 10th after a 49-lap hard-tyre stint.

Lindblad said he had been pushing that scenario well before the race unfolded. Speaking to media including RacingNews365, he said: “I don't know what Liam was asking, but I was saying I think it's going to be a two. So maybe I helped him out.” He added that “even before the race, I was telling them that I think it's going to be a two,” even though the default plan remained a one-stopper.

The British driver said the signs had been there from the start of the weekend. FP1 had already shown degradation, and race day was around 20 degrees hotter. “I just don't feel that these tyres are very good when it gets hot,” he said, adding that Racing Bulls had already needed two-stop races earlier this year in Barcelona and at the Red Bull Ring, both in high temperatures.

That read left Lindblad in the awkward position of seeing the race correctly but ending up on the losing side of the split. He said Hulkenberg “trigger[ed] the two,” prompting Racing Bulls to divide the strategies between its cars. Lindblad understood the call, because if the hard tyre had lasted better, “I would have looked like a hero being P8,” but it did not work out that way.

Instead, Lawson's fresher softs told late in the race. He passed Lindblad on Lap 62, and Hulkenberg also got through as Lindblad slipped to 10th. “So Liam was the one that maximised,” Lindblad said. “I don't have any regrets about the one-stop not working because it could have also been the other way around quite easily.”

Lindblad said his own first stint had reinforced his pre-race feeling. “On the medium, I was going pretty slow in the beginning, and they still weren't very nice; and we ended up boxing on like Lap 21, and it was going to be a [49-lap] stint; it just felt like it was going to be a two.”

Even with the one-stop gamble failing, Lindblad still scored to extend his run to seven straight race weekends in the points, a streak that began with one point in the Canadian GP Sprint and has continued through six successive grands prix. For Racing Bulls, Lawson's eighth place and Lindblad's 10th represented, in Lindblad's words, “the maximum that was possible today.”