Arvid Lindblad: “I’m not going to beat myself up for crashing”

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An unapologetic Arvid Lindblad has defended his right to make mistakes after crashing out of FP2 at Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix – which didn’t prevent the rookie from qualifying 10th.

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Lindblad lost control of his Racing Bulls in Madring’s Turn 13 left-hander, with the impact damaging the right-hand side of the VCARB 03. This ended his Friday running and, with a chassis change required, he completed just seven laps at the end of FP3.

Yet, the Anglo-Swede still matched interim team-mate Yuki Tsunoda’s pace in Q1, then beat him by 0.9s in Q2 to snatch a spot in the top 10 of qualifying.

Asked about his confidence being knocked down by the crash, Lindblad explained: “The bigger thing was just that I didn't drive in FP3, you know? If I had done all of FP3, I don't think it really would have hurt me too much. But the reality was, I had the crash and then I only did two [flying] laps in FP3 and I didn't really get a chance to get comfortable again. And that was the thing that hurt me.

“The reality is we missed – I don't want to say ‘two sessions of learning’, but we weren't comfortable making a change after FP2 because of the crash. Then we didn't drive properly in FP3, so we didn't want to make a change. So we basically only used FP1 for the set-up. I have the same set-up as what we decided after FP1.

“I definitely think that if I hadn't had that crash yesterday, the trajectory to quali would have been very different and I would have been a lot happier.”

Lindblad doesn’t shy away from the fact his shunt made his weekend a lot trickier, but he’s adamant such mistakes are to be expected from F1’s fourth-youngest driver in history.

“It is what it is, it's something to learn from,” he said. “I'm not going to beat myself up for crashing, because it's something that's inevitable.

“I've been so on the limit this year, I've been so fast. It's my 10th Q3 of the season [excluding sprints]. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I'm going to learn from it.”

Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls

Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls

Lindblad’s consistency has actually been remarkable, as he’s yet to retire from a grand prix – though he failed to start the race Montreal race due to a clutch failure. He has scored points in seven of the last eight rounds, is on a nine-time Q3 streak, and hasn’t been outqualified by a team-mate since the Silverstone sprint.

So the Racing Bulls racer’s pace has been equally impressive, as shown by his fourth place in FP2, which he clinched despite crashing out early. Does that show what could have been?

“I wasn't going to be P4 today,” he chuckled. “I mean, I can't go one second quicker.

“The top teams obviously made a step. The reality is maybe our guys just did a better job with the starting set-up, so we started closer.

“So this is where we deserve to be. The reality is yesterday was something special. I think I was ahead of the curve, the team was also ahead of the curve. But there's no hiding the fact that we're not P4. So the reality is tomorrow we're going to try to do the best we can. But P9, unless someone crashes, it's the best that's possible.”

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