F1 star 'saved rival's life' with mega save at Australian Grand Prix

Australian Grand Prix

F1 star 'saved rival's life' with mega save at Australian Grand Prix

The race start nearly ended in a crash in Melbourne

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Monday 9 March 2026 22:59

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An F1 star's mega save on the race start at the Australian Grand Prix has been praised as 'life saving' by some fans.

Following F1's seismic rule change for the 2026, an old issue returned to the power units after the removal of the MGU-H, with drivers finding it harder to spool up the turbo on race starts.

To ease safety concerns, the FIA's race director lengthened the start procedure in Melbourne to five seconds, but this didn't stop a number of slow getaways.

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One of which was Racing Bulls star Liam Lawson, whose slow start saw him tumble from eighth to 18th, and was nearly caught in a dangerous incident with Alpine's Franco Colapinto.

The Argentine narrowly avoided a collision with a stationary Lawson on the race start, by quickly squeezing into the space on the right-hand side by the wall to overtake.

Speaking after the race, Colapinto said: "I was really lucky, to be honest, to go through that lap one.

"[These are] things that can happen with these new cars, but it was just very dangerous and quite sketchy, so I'm glad I went through that. I hit the wall a little bit with the rear right but generally was just that."

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F1 fans react to Australian GP race start

One fan shared the clip of the race start from Colapinto's cockpit on social media, alongside the caption: "This is ridiculous. People talk a lot of crap about Colapinto, but his reaction time probably saved Liam’s life here."

Others agreed, with one adding in the comments: "All F1 drivers have lightning quick reaction times, but yes, he did really well to avoid a nasty collision and prevent both him and Lawson suffering some serious injuries."

Alternatively, other fans disagreed with the semantics that Lawson's life was at risk, with one writing: "Let's not exaggerate, people have crashed into stalled card before, it's not almost certainly not gonna kill you, especially not in these cars."

Another added: "Think it’s a bit exaggerating to say it saved his life. Modern open wheel machinery is very safe. If anything it could have hurt Franco more."

This then forced the original author of the post to respond, who said: "Jesus didn’t expect this to blow up. Clearly I was exaggerating."

F1 drivers agree over race start safety concerns

The fans aren't the only ones with concerns about race starts after the Australian Grand Prix.

McLaren star and reigning F1 champion Lando Norris spoke with brutal honesty over what he sees as an accident waiting to happen.

"It is chaos, and we are going to have a big accident, which is a shame because we are driving and the ones just waiting for something to happen and to go quite horribly wrong and that is not a nice position to be in," he said.

"Depending on what drivers do, you can have closing speeds of 30, 40, 50kph, and when someone hits another driver at that speed, you are going to fly and go over the fence and do a lot of damage to yourself and maybe to others and that is a pretty horrible thing to think about."