{"id":224865,"date":"2025-06-29T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224865\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T20:33:09","slug":"why-liam-lawson-was-lucky-to-survive-on-drive-to-career-best-f1-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224865\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Liam Lawson was ‘lucky to survive’ on drive to career-best F1 finish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Lawson admitted he was \u201clucky to survive\u201d a potential first-lap collision, with Kimi Antonelli having slowed to avoid him before hitting Max Verstappen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Antonelli accepted responsibility for the crash at Turn 3 on the opening lap, which saw him collide with the reigning World Champion, taking both drivers out of the race.<\/p>\n

Liam Lawson \u2018lucky to survive\u2019 early incident in \u2018amazing\u2019 career-best drive<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher<\/p>\n

Lawson<\/a> was namechecked in the FIA stewards\u2019 verdict around the Antonelli-Verstappen incident<\/a>, with the Mercedes driver having explained he sought to avoid the Racing Bulls car as he struggled to slow his W16 down.<\/p>\n

But as he was able to carry on, the New Zealander was one of only a select few to execute a one-stop strategy around the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, holding Fernando Alonso at arm\u2019s length for a significant proportion of proceedings to claim a career-best sixth at the chequered flag.<\/p>\n

Admitting \u201cthe car has been very quick, and we haven\u2019t been able to convert,\u201d Lawson said it was a \u201cpretty cool\u201d feeling to secure a top-six finish, though there was a heart-in-mouth moment for him.<\/p>\n

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com in Austria, Lawson explained his view of the accident and how he \u201cgot lucky\u201d in avoiding being tangled up in the incident.<\/p>\n

More reaction to the Austrian Grand Prix<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0McLaren\u2019s Austria charge proves its racing spirit is the attitude F1 needs<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Austrian GP: Norris wins as Verstappen eliminated in Mercedes clash<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen it now, and obviously [Antonelli] was trying to avoid [me] as we were slowing down,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cLap 1, in a hairpin like that, everyone backs up a lot and I know, obviously, it wasn\u2019t on purpose, so we were very lucky to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I thought I got hit, to be honest. I thought we were probably going to have damage, and the car was fine. So, yeah, got lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredibly tough year, a very tough year with a lot of potential. I came into F1 and even last year, had a few races, and most of them converted very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you can have all the confidence and speed in the world, and they don\u2019t [convert], and it\u2019s felt like that this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo finally have a result is amazing, but we need to obviously keep doing this as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last couple of weekends, I think Canada, we had really good speed in practice. Barcelona, had good speed in practice, Monaco as well, and the result didn\u2019t convert.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been pushing a lot with the car, and especially with our side of the garage. They\u2019ve been doing a lot of work to make me comfortable, and we made some changes this weekend, and they\u2019ve worked really, really well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to, obviously, keep pushing, but it\u2019s sometimes like that in Formula 1. Sometimes the speed and everything can be there, but there are a lot of variables in this sport, and they\u2019ve worked for us this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Horner dismisses Max Verstappen contract \u2018noise\u2019 amid fresh Mercedes rumours<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson admitted he was \u201clucky to survive\u201d a potential first-lap collision, with Kimi Antonelli having slowed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[88064,4199,707,4200,225,228,12,1084,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-224865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-austrian-grand-prix","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-home-page","13":"tag-liam-lawson","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-racing-bulls","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114768563769172756","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}