Lawson puts his 12th place down to an engine deficit against the midfield. “We’re just trying to make up time that is not really there and it’s really tough,” he told The Race. On his final lap, with the right tow, he reckons he was in Q3.
At Racing Bulls, the other car finished last of those eliminated in Q2, running a slightly older spec of parts after the team introduced a new front wing at Baku. Arvid Lindblad is frustrated with himself: in trying to be too special, he said, he damaged his trajectory for the moment that matters.
Time that doesn’t exist, I found some this morning. I redid the lap with a ghost in front of me to simulate the tow: I gain a tenth and a half down the straight. In the sim, you control the tow. In real life you need a car exactly there, at the right moment, and nobody’s modelled that. And “too special”, I know that one: at my place it’s called trying to beat your record on the first lap. You reset. They can’t. In theory, the time was there.
Lindblad had qualified in the top ten in nine of the season’s fourteen Grands Prix, including the last seven in a row.
It’s true, we checked: The Race.
