Lawson brushes off Tsunoda fury after Q2 flashpoint at COTA
Yuki Tsunoda was incandescent on the radio. Liam Lawson, not so much.
The former teammates found each other at the wrong moment in Qualifying 2 for the United States Grand Prix, a Turn 11 run-in that lit Tsunoda’s fuse and left Lawson shrugging. Both were knocked out in Q2, Lawson set to start 12th with Tsunoda 13th, separated by just over a tenth.
Tsunoda’s gripe was simple: he was on a push lap, Lawson wasn’t, and the Kiwi’s pace through the mid-corner at Turn 11 cost him the shot at Q3.
“I saw he was going very, very slow until Turn 11, kind of waiting for me in the middle of the corner,” Tsunoda said afterward. “Until then, I had enough pace to go through to Q3 and lost everything from that, so very frustrating.”
On the radio it was spikier still, with the Japanese driver accusing Lawson of “disturbing me on purpose.”
This wasn’t an isolated flashpoint. Tsunoda also ran into traffic — Lawson among it — during Sprint Qualifying on Friday and missed the SQ1 cut after failing to start his final lap in time. It’s a pattern he says has been building for a while.
“I’ll mention it,” he added, noting they’d already talked after Monza. “We talked it out I think since Monza or whatever. But it’s always like that. I have to always be careful.”
Lawson, for his part, looked genuinely bemused by the whole thing.
“Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what he has to complain about,” he said. “I don’t really remember being in front of him in qualifying today. So, yeah, he’s obviously angry; he can be angry, but it doesn’t bother me.”
The 23-year-old was more irritated by a gust of wind than by Tsunoda. After showing top-10 pace in the Sprint earlier in the day — he finished ninth — Lawson said a sudden puff at Turn 1 scuppered his final Q2 lap.
“It’s a shame we got a really big gust of wind at Turn 1 and it really upset the car,” he explained. “It’s just come at a really bad time, so it’s frustrating. If this was the best we had, OK, I would have been reasonably happy, but to have a very quick car this weekend and not extract it is frustrating.”
Strip away the radio barbs and Saturday reads like a classic COTA qualifying story: elbows out on the out-laps, traffic in the wrong places, and tiny margins deciding who makes the final cut. Tsunoda felt the delay cost him; Lawson insists there was no intent — or even awareness — on his side.
What’s undeniable is the subplot. These two know each other’s habits intimately from their time as teammates, and neither is inclined to give an inch. With Lawson starting directly ahead and both drivers feeling they had more in hand, the drag to Turn 1 on Sunday is set to bristle.
Keep an eye on mirrors, gentlemen. The margin between a clean getaway and another pointed conversation could be a single car length.
