Lawson's breakthrough result was nearly over on Lap 1 in incident that cost Verstappen: 'I thought I was it'

09:54, 01 Jul

Co-author:Kada Sárközi

byKimberley Hoefnagel

Liam Lawson was the highest ranked Red Bull family driver at the team's home Grand Prix. The driver from New Zealand was clearly over the moon with his best result so far in his career.

Lawson qualified in P6, and also ahead of Max Verstappen, after the Dutchman couldn't complete his second flying lap because of yellow flags.

On Sunday, Lawson drove a good race and finished in P6, which is also his best result in F1 to this day. After Verstappen's DNF on Lap 1, that also meant he was the first Red Bull family driver to cross the finish line at the Red Bull Ring.

After the race, Lawson appeared in the Formula 1 paddock in an excellent mood. “It's been an incredibly tough year. A very tough year with a lot of potential,” he told GPblog among others.

"I came into F1 and even last year had a few races and most of them converted very well."

“And sometimes you can have all the confidence and speed in the world and they don't. And it's felt like that this year, so to finally have a result is amazing, but we need to obviously keep doing this as well.”

Moreover, it was the best result a 'Kiwi' driver could achieve over the last 49 years: “Is it really? That's pretty cool. Obviously for New Zealand it's great as well. Obviously there's a few Kiwis coming up as well and hopefully in the future we can have some more of them on the way into Formula 1 as well.”

Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli after the crash

Lawson thought he got hit on Lap 1

Into Turn 3, Kimi Antonelli locked up his rear tyres and hit Max Verstappen, leading to both drivers getting eliminated from the race. For the incident, the Italian rookie received a three-place grid penalty for the British GP as well.

The driver also told the stewards he ended up on the dirty side of the road as he wanted to avoid Lawson.

"He was trying to avoid us all slowing down, but Lap 1 is, then it happens like that, everyone backs up a lot and I know obviously it wasn't on purpose."

He added: "We were very lucky to survive. I don't actually know, I mean I thought I got hit to be honest I thought we were probably going to have damage and the car was fine so yes, got lucky."