Lawson reveals drivers ‘respected’ rules after ‘dangerous’ Hamilton near-miss

Liam Lawson says drivers “respected” the closing gap in qualifying for the Azerbaijan GP, avoiding a repeat of his “dangerous” near-miss with Lewis Hamilton in practice.

Lawson had a hairy moment in Baku during  Thursday’s second practice for Saturday’s race as he came screaming up behind the slow-moving Hamilton.

Liam Lawson explains how F1 drivers avoided another dangerous Baku near-miss

The New Zealander was on a flying lap whereas Hamilton, ahead of him on the track, was on an out-lap.

Lawson caught the Ferrari driver at Turn 19 and had to work his way around Hamilton at pace.

“That is so ****ing dangerous! Oh my god! Dude! That is so dangerous,” Lawson complained to Racing Bulls.

Hamilton blamed the extreme closing speed between a driver ahead who is harvesting energy and a driver behind who is deploying energy, and said he was four seconds ahead of Lawson and then suddenly the Racing Bulls driver was on his rear wing.

“There’s no guidelines of how big a gap you have, to understand the closing speed that you’re gonna have, with the guy that’s on the lap,” he said.

“I was four seconds ahead, I thought, this looks big enough, I go on the power, and once I got to T18, the speed deficit was huge and there was nowhere I could go at that point.”

The drivers had been warned about such a scenario by F1 race director Rui Marques.

In his updated notes on Thursday, he said: “Cars on out laps or slow laps should keep extreme left (i.e. not “offline” in middle of track) from exit T16 through to Entry T18.

“We consider that Teams / Drivers can and should manage traffic gaps before T18 (going as slowly as required being on the extreme left) to ensure that they can transit between the apex of T18 and apex of T19 without impeding an approaching car that is trying to set a competitive lap time.

“Cars on out laps or slow laps should keep ‘extreme’ right exit T19 until they achieve relevant speed to open the following lap.”

That, though, isn’t what happened on Thursday, leaving drivers to speak about the incident during that evening’s driver briefing.

While no details have been released, Lawson says everyone respected the rules during qualifying.

“Yeah, we spoke about it a lot in the meeting,” Lawson told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Baku.

“I think everybody had a good idea of sort of the gap you needed after Turn 16 to get through 18, 19, and honestly, looked like everyone respected that today.”

Lawson qualified 12th on his return to Racing Bulls after three races filling in for Isack Hadjar at Red Bull.

More on qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Russell storms to Azerbaijan GP pole with huge 0.837s margin, Antonelli crashes

Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2026 – Qualifying F1 results (Baku)

“The lap was very good up until the last couple of corners, and just struggled with overheating,” he said.

“Just didn’t get a tow as well, which is really powerful here, especially for us this weekend as we’ve been pretty slow down the straights.

“Yeah, so it’s frustrating.

“I actually think we’ve done quite a good job with the car, and looking back to some tracks earlier in the year, or tracks where we’ve been quite competitive, I actually feel like we’ve made a step with the car.

“Honestly, we’re just a lot worse now down the straights, to be honest, compared to some of the other teams with other power units, especially on these tracks with long straights.

“So yeah, it’s pretty frustrating.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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