Liam Lawson doesn’t understand why Carlos Sainz was so upset about the penalty he received for their clash at the Dutch Grand Prix, nor why he hasn’t spoken to him since.
The duo collided just after the safety car restart at Zandvoort, with both drivers picking up race-ruining damage for an incident that the stewards deemed Sainz’s fault.
Sainz was slapped with a 10-second time penalty as both Lawson and Sainz finished outside the points on a day when their respective team-mates scored big (Isack Hadjar was third, Alex Albon finished fifth).
Sainz told media after the race the penalty was a “complete joke” and not “the level of stewarding of Formula 1”.
He was also critical of Lawson, having given him a sarcastic thumbs-up mid-race, he criticised Lawson’s racecraft after the event too.
“He always seems to prefer to have a bit of contact and risk a DNF or a puncture, like we did, than to actually accept having two cars side by side,” Sainz said.
“Hopefully it will come with more experience to him, because he knows he's putting too many points on the line just for an unnecessary manoeuvre, like he did.”
Lawson wasn’t impressed with Sainz’s comments on Sunday night, saying “he can make all the comments in the world he likes, I wish he'd just come and talk to me about it rather than telling everybody else”.
Four days on, at the first day of the Italian GP, Lawson is still waiting for Sainz to speak to him about the incident.
“He's the car going for the overtake, I ran him outside and he didn't get his axle where he needed to get it and somehow I'm deemed as being aggressive,” Lawson said at Monza.
“So I don't really understand it. But it ruined my race. We were in a position to potentially have two cars in the top five.
“But I didn't go on the radio and [complain to] everybody about it or to the media. So yeah, it's his approach after that race.
“I don't know why he was so upset, honestly. If I was overtaking him, I would understand that he's more frustrated, but he was the car overtaking and he got a penalty for it.”
Lawson added: "I would have thought, because of how upset he was, he would probably want to talk about it, but he hasn't come to talk about it.”
Lawson learned his lesson
Lawson says he’s been in Sainz’s position earlier this year and has learned his lesson with these racing guidelines.
Lawson lost a points finish in the Miami sprint race when he collided with Fernando Alonso while trying to pass his Aston Martin around the outside of the tight Turn 11 left-hander.
The stewards penalised Lawson who disagreed with the decision at the time.
“I think it probably did at the start of the year when I had a couple of the incidents,” Lawson said when asked if the racing guidelines confused him.
“One for me that stands out was Miami with Fernando where I tried to go around the outside and I felt like I wasn't given space and at the time I remember feeling like it wasn't, maybe I shouldn't have got a penalty, but when you read the guidelines and you understand them, that's how they're written this year.
“So I think for us we need to understand them as they're written and I think from that point for me I took a lot of learning from that and I know that if I'm overtaking I need to get my axle to a certain point, and same if somebody's overtaking me.
“If the guidelines say I don't have to give them space, why would I give them space and let them pass me? That doesn't make sense.”
Lawson added: “I don't know why I was deemed as being aggressive when he was the car overtaking me.
“I was just defending. If the incident was my fault, I would have got a penalty. So to me, it's pretty clear.”
Grand Prix Drivers’ Association Director Sainz evidently disagreed and had extensive meetings with the FIA following the incident, so much so that he missed much of the immediate post-race debrief at Williams on Sunday night, according to team-mate Alex Albon.
