The Baku problem exposed by scary Hamilton and Lawson near-miss

Lewis Hamilton received a reprimand after being deemed guilty of "severe" impeding of Liam Lawson during second practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, forcing Lawson to brake sharply at 300km/h through the Turn 18/19 sequence in Baku. The near-miss stemmed not from normal inattentiveness but from a quirk of F1's 2026 rules: Hamilton was running at just 250km/h in "auto-k" mode, conserving battery ahead of the timing line, while Lawson was on a flat-out lap at full deployment. Race director Rui Marques had already issued revised event notes on Thursday requiring drivers on slow or out-laps to stay to the extreme left through that section, but teams found the guidance difficult to apply in practice.