Liam Lawson, Alexander Albon and Oliver Bearman share their opinions on F1 Spanish GP incident, where the trio ended up outside the points in the end.
From among the three, Visa Cash App RB’s Lawson looked likely the best to score in F1 Spanish GP. Williams’ Albon already was in trouble after Lap 1 tap which forced him to pit early for a front wing change. It was the usual first lap drama, but he found himself in the mess due to a clutch issue.
The Thai then had a run-in with Lawson which resulted in a 10s time penalty. Albon thought he had the apex but the stewards determined otherwise. They had another clip on the next lap when the Kiwi was on the outside and the front wing was clipped when the pass was completed.
The Williams driver served the penalty before retiring with damage. It was not the end for Lawson as he had another double with Haas’ Bearman. The Brit was handed time penalty as well for a similar moment like Albon. The double fight ultimately hampered the Kiwi’s progress to score.
The fight between Lawson and Bearman also hurt Max Verstappen at one point when the Dutchman was chasing Lando Norris for second. The Red Bull driver gestured against the Haas driver. Both Lawson and Bearman didn’t want to hold up the leaders in their fight on purpose.
Collisions, race –
Lawson: “We were just in traffic with good speed, so we had to overtake somehow. And although we had a pace advantage, it wasn’t easy to overtake. There were big moves trying to get through. It just sucks that it all gets unfolded because of the safety car at the end. We missed the safety car line by half a second, maybe. So that’s just unfortunate. We lost so much time behind the safety car that basically everybody was able to start pushing, and we had to just sit behind for four laps. We probably should have boxed the first lap when the safety car came out. These situations, sometimes you just don’t know. It is something that we have to review with the team. I don’t really remember it, honestly I can’t remember what happened.
“They are what they are, I was just trying to overtake to how it is written in the rule book – making sure that I have my front wheel ahead of the apex which they were just. To be honest, I didn’t even feel the contact, so yeah. It feels wasted, honestly, because the car was so fast, we were really fast in the long run. We caught him at a second per lap, and as much as the contact was completely on me, the lap afterwards, he was still fighting me super hard. We’re here to race, so there is nothing I can do about it, but for sure, we both lost a lot of race-time like this. I think these regulations have potentially suited us a little bit, which is quite cool and obviously we have only been to one track, so we will wait and see how they are in other races.”
Albon: “We had a clutch issue at the start. The clutch when it fell it felt good and I believe I was on target but then we had an issue with the clutch. We lost out quite heavily at the beginning. That put us on the backfoot into Turn 1. There was concertina of cars avoiding each other and I was the last one to get it, so I lost my front wing. It forced us on a three-stop but an early three-stop, then we had a front wing change. You do the three-stop and you are undercut, so it is a worse of everything. Honestly, from that point on, I don’t know how you view the Liam incident – the first one – but for me, I don’t know how I was going to ever make the corner.
“For me, it was an avoiding action because he was running me out, so I thought, well he couldn’t complete the move cleanly without pushing me, so I am entitled to the position. I might be wrong on that but that was my feeling towards it, and anyways I boxed the next lap, so I got out of his way. Maybe I was not early enough for them. And then we came with Liam [again] later in the race, a bit of a tricky one. I tried my best to stay out of it, at that point my tyres were gone.
“And another front wing, I don’t know about front wing but we definitely picked up enough damage in this race to not warrant anymore risks, we decided to retire the car. Honestly, it is hard to know. A lot of the contacts I was getting was on the sides, not just clipping the fronts but clipping the end pieces of the floor, and at that point the car was badly wounded and we just decided to stop.”
Bearman: “I had soft tyres in the end but I couldn’t really do anything with it. Honestly, on the straightline speed, I have been struggling a bit, just couldn’t fight anyone out there. A bit unfortunate that we couldn’t really do anything with the new tyre. It was a tight battle [against Lawson], I feel a bit hard done by given the penalty but of course, I haven’t seen it yet, but it felt like I was totally pushed off.”
Against the leaders –
Lawson: “It is not ideal, I don’t want to hold up the leaders. As soon as I was in Turn 2-3, I tried to get out of the way because I wasn’t trying to….you had just one opportunity there to try to pass Ollie as well. He was very aggressive defending, yeah I tried to make it work.”
Bearman: “I am not sure why, I need to have a look. I am sorry if I did anything bad to him but it is tough to manage with everything going on in the race, he just went on my inside, I wasn’t trying to do anything bad of course, but I am sorry if I did.”
Here’s the incident with the leaders: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-spanish-grand-prix-squabbling-lawson-and-bearman-hold-up-norris-and-verstappen.1833752758767689410
Here’s Isack Hadjar on scoring in Spanish GP
