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Lawson spun his RB when attempting to pass Bottas on Lap 4 following the first Safety Car restart.
The New Zealander had moved to the inside and looked to have the move done, but ran out of grip and slid up the track.
The error dropped Lawson to the rear of the grid, and saw him handed a 10-second penalty for his troubles.
“I thought we had really good temperature,” Lawson said of his tyres at the restart.
“I worked a lot, the tyres, on the restart on the Safety Car, went for a move, and halfway around the corner realised I wasn’t [going to make it].
“I was sliding up the track towards him and, at that point, I just tried to get out of it, honestly, because I was about to hit him.
“I tried to check up and spun the car. I don’t know if we touched, I guess we did.”
Lawson found Bottas shortly after the race and offered his apologies for the incident, which saw the Finn drop behind team-mate Zhou Guanyu after being delayed by the spinning RB.
“I didn’t expect him to stay out there, to be honest. Because he did, obviously I was sliding up the track. But it’s my fault.”
Having dropped to the rear of the field, Lawson had pace in hand such that he quickly caught back up to the rear of the field.
However, another Safety Car and poor pace limited his ability to move forward.
That prompted a hail Mary strategy call with both RB drivers swapped onto the soft compound tyres for the final laps.
It was a disastrous decision and the pair only dropped away from the pack as they struggled for pace.
“We knew it was going to be risky but we tried to play something there,” Lawson reasoned.
“That’s unfortunate.
“On the other compounds, I honestly don’t think we were so bad. Never really ran the hard properly because we were just under Safety Car, and I think on the medium, to be honest, we weren’t so bad.”
Lawson was the last car home on the lead lap, 1.5s behind Yuki Tsunoda in the sister car, the pair in 13th and 14th respectively.
With Pierre Gasly fifth, and Kevin Magnussen ninth, the result has seen RB slump to eight points behind Haas in seventh in the constructors’ championship, and 13 back from Alpine in sixth.
