Liam Lawson has been having a strong weekend so far at the F1 Monaco GP, looking fast during practice sessions, and securing P9 in today’s qualifying. With his teammate, Isack Hadjar, managing to claim a strong P6 in qualifying, they secured a double Q3 finish for Racing Bulls. Despite this positive outcome for the team, Lawson still believes the result could have been better in the print media pen.
The New Zealander was consistently a fraction behind his teammate through the sessions, ultimately ending up 0.2s and three places behind Hadjar on the grid. It became four thanks to Hamilton’s grid penalty.
“To be honest, I actually think we missed out a little bit on something higher. We’ve been improving all through the sessions, and start of quali was very positive, but I think towards the end…I struggled a little bit with warm-up, I got a bit of traffic, and small things make a big difference here.”
Optimistic about the team’s improvement
Despite Racing Bulls’ positive weekend in Monaco so far, they have previously experienced difficulties this season, making the moments when everything comes together all the more important. Lawson expressed optimism about the team’s improvement, when asked about having a clean weekend following a difficult run of form since his return to the team.
“Yeah, it’s positive obviously from where it’s been recently. It hasn’t come together at all through any of the weekends so it’s a good start to the weekend. Obviously, tomorrow’s the important day. As much as today arguably is as important, if not more to be fair around here, but hopefully with the new rules we can try and make something happen tomorrow.”
The role of confidence in the car
This weekend, everything appears to have clicked into place for the team, despite Monaco being one of the more difficult tracks to tackle. When asked about how his confidence plays into his driving going forward, Lawson expressed that confidence has not been an issue for him.
“I think honestly that’s not really been something I’ve struggled with, like confidence this year has always been okay. And I probably shouldn’t say it’s clicked this weekend because it’s clicked back in Japan. It’s just in Formula One, you need so many things to work together to have a result. There’s a lot of variables in this sport and I think it’s just been unfortunate for us so far. Speed has felt good through most of the weekends I would say, and this weekend we’ve managed to show at least some of it in quali.”
As Lawson explained, there are many small factors that need to work together in order for a team to achieve a desirable result. When these factors come together, having confidence in the car can only help. When it comes to confidence providing an extra boost, the driver stated that:, “For sure it helps, you wanna be in a upwards momentum of results. It always helps, honestly.”
The strategy with the new pit stop rule
As of recently, it became mandatory for the drivers to make at least two pit stops at the Monaco GP. This will be new to all of the drivers, and Lawson was asked about how it could come into play when looking at the strategy for the race.
“Truthfully, nobody really knows, it’s gonna be new for all of us. It’ll allow us, for sure, some more opportunities so we’ll be trying to crunch the numbers and come up with something. And with both cars together in Q3, there’s potential to do something different maybe, but it’s something we’ll have to talk about.”
Additionally, the Kiwi driver was questioned about the team’s expectations coming into the weekend, and if they anticipated for both Racing Bull cars to be in the top ten. Lawson continued to state that they’re “an optimistic team” and that they’re “always looking at Q3”, especially with the field being immensely close.
“Honestly, if you put things together, even if the car’s not quite there, you put it all together and sometimes it squeaks through. I’d say we’ve been optimistic.”
Lawson appears to be feeling positive about tomorrow’s race and the opportunity to do something different.
