Lawson says a VSC alarm kept beeping and cost him six seconds at the US GP
Liam Lawson says an alarm kept sounding under the late Virtual Safety Car in Austin even though he was six seconds inside the delta target. He slowed further, finished ninth and suggested the glitch may have affected every driver.
An alarm that would not stop
The Virtual Safety Car period near the end of the United States Grand Prix turned into a confusing few laps for Liam Lawson. According to PlanetF1, it began when Valtteri Bottas stopped his Cadillac on the back straight with four laps to go, which triggered the VSC.
Under a VSC, drivers must stay above a minimum delta time, and an alarm sounds if they go over the limit. Lawson's alarm went off, so he slowed down. When he looked at his display he was six seconds on the right side of the target, yet the alarm kept beeping.
'I thought I was illegal'
Lawson described the noise as "extremely distracting" and said it stayed on throughout. Fearing a breach, he kept easing off and lost around six seconds in the process. "I thought I was illegal," he said.
He also suggested the problem was not limited to his car. "I think it might have been a bug that everybody had," Lawson said. PlanetF1 reports no official statement from Racing Bulls or the FIA about the alarm, and it is not clear whether the issue will be investigated.
A solid points finish
The lost time did not change his result. Lawson started ninth and finished ninth, eight seconds ahead of Alpine's Pierre Gasly, according to PlanetF1. That keeps him top of the so-called best-of-the-rest battle in the Drivers' Championship, with a 35-point lead over Gasly.
His weekend had other talking points. Racing Bulls brought new parts to Austin, and both Lawson and team-mate Arvid Lindblad reached the Q3 shootout. Lawson set no lap there because the team saved his fresh tyres for the race.
What the data shows
Our race data lists the United States Grand Prix as round 18 of the season, with Kimi Antonelli winning by 13.078 seconds and three retirements, one of which was Bottas's late stop that caused the VSC.
The next race is the Mexico City Grand Prix on 1 November, with the start at 21:00 Vienna time.
