Liam Lawson continued a very strong season as the New Zealander backed up his P5 in the Sprint with a 7th place in the 2026 F1 Singapore GP.
The 24-year-old returned to Racing Bulls for the triple-header once Isack Hadjar had recovered from his injury. After getting taken out by his teammate in Baku, the driver of car 30 has finished P7 in Malaysia and Singapore.
In qualifying on Saturday, the multi-time F2 and F3 race winner was the fastest midfield runner in Q1 and Q2. Unfortunately for him, a relatively poor Q3 lap put him behind Pierre Gasly on the grid in 9th. It was half a tenth slower than his middle segment one.
Nonetheless, he made up for it off the line. Using the soft tyres from the dirty side of the grid, Lawson got a better start and overtook the Alpine into Turn 1. That was for P7 as George Russell was back down the grid because of engine component changes.
From there, he had an intense race against Nico Hülkenberg. While they never went wheel-to-wheel, there was never more than 3s between them throughout. Audi had attempted an undercut as Hülkenberg swapped from mediums to softs on Lap 30, with Lawson responding immediately to go to mediums. The Kiwi rejoined just a tenth ahead at that point.
At the flag, he was P7, 1.7s ahead of the German.
Liam Lawson very pleased with 2026 F1 Singapore GP performance
Speaking in the print media post-race, the New Zealander discussed his fantastic start to pass Gasly and applying pressure to McLaren’s Oscar Piastri on the first lap.
“Yeah, much more satisfied.
“I mean, the target really today was to get him off the line, and we were able to do that.
“I’m just going to watch the start now, because they’re showing it. Just really attacked Turn 1. I don’t know if he went off. Yeah, I squeezed him a little bit.
“In the end we started on the soft, and I had so much grip that I was attacking a McLaren. And I didn’t really want to be, I just wanted them to pull away, but the first part of the first lap, everybody was sort of bunching up.
“So yeah, the car’s been very strong this weekend in all conditions, so very, very happy.”
Difficult first few laps
As it was a Sprint weekend, alongside using inters in the damp Sprint Race, Liam Lawson and the other 21 drivers went into the unknown for the 2026 F1 Singapore GP.
The driver 7th in the championship admitted the first few laps were extremely difficult as he was getting used to the tyres and car balance on full tanks.
“The first part of the race for me was very, very tough, honestly. I think mainly because also we didn’t do any long runs on Friday, so we didn’t know really what the car was going to be like.
“So that made it very, very tough. And yeah, I think once we got on top of that, everything was okay.”
