Liam Lawson Reflects on Controversial Battle with Charles Leclerc
Liam Lawson left Interlagos with points on the board and a question mark in his mind.
The New Zealander was shoved aside by Charles Leclerc in a bruising late scrap for seventh in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, and he is not convinced the Ferrari driver stayed within the lines.
Leclerc’s late “bump and run”
On lap 69 of 71, with the track still slick and grip at a premium, Leclerc dived at Lawson into Turn 12. The Ferrari’s right-front made contact with Lawson’s left-rear as they climbed the hill, nudging the RB wide and opening the door for Leclerc to carry superior momentum up towards the start-finish straight.
Lawson clung on into Turn 1. The fight did not end there.
Wheel-to-wheel, lap 70, Leclerc came again. This time, into Turn 4, he finally muscled his way through to secure seventh place on the road after a fierce, committed duel that lit up the closing laps.
Lawson crossed the line in eighth, 1.816s behind. That margin matters. If the stewards decide Leclerc’s move crossed the line and hand out a penalty for causing a collision, Lawson is perfectly placed to inherit the position.
Leclerc has already been summoned to explain the incident, and Lawson could not help but draw on an old reference point.
He compared it to Leclerc’s notorious 2017 GP2 move on Alex Albon in Abu Dhabi, when the Monegasque tapped Albon into the hairpin, used the contact to slingshot down the long back straight, and went on to win. A classic “bump and run” – and in Lawson’s eyes, Saturday in Sao Paulo followed the same template.
“I think it was his wing which hit my tyre, so I think we got really lucky,” Lawson said afterwards. He admitted the flashback was instant: “I feel like it was exactly like his GP2 move on Albon in Abu Dhabi years ago; he did the same kind of thing, so maybe it is his speciality.
“I don't know if it is legal or not, and we'll go and review it, but it was a good battle overall.”
The praise for the fight was genuine. The doubt over the legality was, too.
Early charge, fading grip
The evening had promised even more for Lawson.
Launching from third on the grid, he exploded off the line and immediately felt a bigger prize might be within reach. For a brief moment, Interlagos offered him the sort of opportunity young drivers dream about.
“It was a crazy race, honestly,” he said. “I had a really good start, good grip into Turn 1 and made a place up and was thinking I might try and attack Kimi at some point in the lap.”
Kimi Antonelli, out front, was the target. Lawson’s confidence surged in those opening corners.
Then reality bit.
Once the field settled and the lap times levelled out, Lawson’s car simply did not have the pace to live with the leaders. The tyres went away quicker, the balance faded, and the early aggression had to give way to management.
“But once the pace stabilised, they're a lot quicker than us,” he admitted. “We started to fall back, we were damaging the tyre quite a lot more than them, and then the pace in the dry was okay.”
The race slipped into a different phase: less about chasing Antonelli, more about hanging on to what he had and fending off the scarlet threat behind.
That brought the story back to Leclerc.
“At the end, I tried to keep Charles before,” Lawson said. “We had some contact into Turn 12, ended up losing the place.”
The stewards will now decide whether that loss was simply the hard edge of elite racing or a step too far from a driver with a history of using contact as a weapon. For Lawson, still carving out his place on the grid, the verdict could turn a bruising fight into one of the most important results of his career.
