Liam Lawson admits he “braced for impact” before Franco Colapinto’s "impressive" Australian GP move

Liam Lawson praised Franco Colapinto’s “very impressive” reactions after the Alpine driver narrowly avoided a major crash at the start of the Australian Grand Prix

Liam Lawson branded Franco Colapinto's quick move to avoid crashing into him at the start of the Australian Grand Prix "very impressive."

Lawson's car became bogged down at the start of the season-opening grand prix, and Alpine's Colapinto, who started behind him, was quickly faced with the gearbox of the slow-moving Racing Bull. While the New Zealander admitted he had already braced himself for a crash, Colapinto quickly swerved to the right-hand side of Lawson and wove his car in the narrow gap between him and the wall.

"It was very impressive from his side to avoid it," Lawson told the media in Shanghai after seeing the replay footage.

"He had very good reactions and I was very lucky. I honestly at that point had braced already in the car because I was looking in my mirror and I saw his car on my left when he was close to me and I was sure he was going to hit me and then all of a sudden he came by me on the right.

"He did a very good job to avoid that and obviously we need to do everything we can to make sure we don't have the same issues off the start because it cost us the race."

When asked if there is anything that can be done to improve the consistency of the race starts, Lawson added: "If it keeps going on like this, yeah, what happened on the weekend is so easy to happen. If Franco hadn't done a very good job of avoiding it, that would have been a really big crash.

"At the moment it is quite dangerous, but in terms of the decision-making, we're not part of that, so we'll obviously give our opinions on what we're feeling inside the car but it's up to the FIA. If they want to change something, then they will."