Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson will start the 2026 F1 United States GP from ninth on the grid, but the Kiwi driver admitted it was “a bit frustrating” to not have a chance to go out and set a lap in the final part of qualifying.
The New Zealander was told to stay in the garage during Q3, as the pace of the top four teams was just too much to contend with, and because his Racing Bulls team-mate Arvid Lindblad would serve a five-place grid drop for exceeding his power unit allocation for the season, the logical thing was to let Lindblad take ninth in qualifying, which wouldn’t change Lawson’s actual starting position and also helped Lindblad start from further up the order, in 14th.
Lawson “asked to go out” in Q3 at the 2026 F1 United States GP
Although he agreed to the conditions and ultimately understood the logic behind it, Lawson admitted he was eager to go out and set a lap in the final shootout session, especially given he – unusually – had two new sets of soft tyres available:
“I would have loved to have a go at Q3, we actually got there with two sets as well, which is not normal for us,” he said. “In a normal situation if we’re fighting an Alpine or an Audi, having those two sets would have been great to use.
“I would have loved to have a go at it, but considering Arvid [Lindblad] has got a penalty, it’s going to be ninth and 10th anyway, so it just doesn’t make sense. Now we have plenty of tyres for tomorrow.
“I asked to go out, I’ll be honest,” he revealed. “I said ‘I want to go and do it’; and they said no.
“So it’s frustrating a little bit for a driver, especially because we’ve had a very strong weekend so far, the car’s been very good, Q1 on one set we were comfortably through, Q2 was a little bit more tricky to be honest, but going to Q3 with two sets of tyres would have been lots of fun.”
Lawson reflects on Racing Bulls’ “good” pace in both qualifying and long runs at 2026 F1 United States GP
The Faenza-based squad has shown incredible pace so far at the 2026 F1 season, sitting fifth in the constructors’ standings, and continued that trend at the United States GP weekend, with Lawson comfortably making it through Q1 on just one set of tyres, whilst squeezing his way into Q3 despite a messy final corner.
When asked about that pace, the 24-year-old was very relaxed and confident that he can have a good race with a car that’s been performing well in both short and long runs so far:
“Yeah, I mean to be fair it was very very close with Pierre [Gasly] in Q2, but obviously we were one set less at that point.
“We were ready to go if we needed to in Q3 there, the car’s been good in the long run as well so hopefully we can have a good race.”
Lawson expects “interesting” race in terms of tyres
As for the tyres, the Kiwi expects an “interesting” race in terms of degradation, given the teams faced higher levels of wear on Friday than expected – but warned that Friday practice runs not always reflect the real picture of the grand prix on Sunday, as track evolution plays a huge role in the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres, which look to be on the more conservative end for this weekend’s United States GP:
“It’s definitely been more of a thing this year, I would say,” he said when asked about the tyres being too durable this year, making the hard tyre nearly obsolote.
“Obviously we’ll analyse what we did on Friday and it was probably more [degradation] than we were expecting, to be honest.
“But also we’ve seen a lot through the year, that through the weekend it changes a lot, what we have on Friday is not necessarily what we get on Sunday, so I’m sure it’ll be interesting.”
“Put grass everywhere” – Lawson’s solution for track limits issue in 2026 F1 United States GP
Despite it not playing such a huge role in the actual qualifying session, track limits were a major discussion point in the paddock all weekend long, as drivers struggled to keep their cars between the white lines and had plenty of lap times deleted through the practice sessions leading up to qualifying.
The FIA took some measures heading into Saturday as a response, sich as extending – and pushing further back – the white lines at Turns 12, 15 and 20.
But according to Lawson, the real solution would be to put a physical deterrent in place, as he believes putting “grass everywhere” would instantly solve the issue:
“I mean it’s kind of you’re just driving and constantly steering [away from] the white lines, trying not to exceed them.
“I think, honestly, all they need to do is put grass everywhere, just a strip of grass on the exit of all these corners,” he suggested. “There was no problem when we had AstroTurf, you’d have a penalty with it so I don’t know.
“It comes up [and] every year we talk about it honestly, every year we come here it’s track limits.
“I think there were 70 track limits in FP1 and probably more than that in FP2 so it’s, I don’t know, it’s just something that’s unfortunately is a thing at this track.
“I don’t know if they used to have it, I think they used to be AstroTurf maybe quite a long time ago. Lay some more down, I feel like is probably the solution.
“But at least I don’t think it was so bad today in qualifying, but we’re all very conscious of it, obviously we know that if we exceed it we get the lap deleted.”
