Amidst treacherous conditions, Liam Lawson paced Racing Bulls’ efforts at the Las Vegas GP, putting his car 6th on the grid for Saturday night’s F1 race. Lawson’s fastest lap was just 1.128 seconds behind polesitter Lando Norris, and 0.492 seconds ahead of teammate Isack Hadjar.
“We could have improved”
The result is the New Zealander’s best qualifying run since Azerbaijan, and he acknowledged that the full-wet conditions played into the team’s favor.
“These conditions only helped us. And I think, honestly, I feel like we even had more in the tank today. We missed the last lap by one or two seconds. And yeah, I think with how the session had been going up to that point, I think I felt pretty confident we could have improved.”
Uncertainty as the clouds clear for Saturday
On a circuit that Lawson called “already slippery in the dry”, the forecast is for clear conditions for the F1 Las Vegas GP. The downside to this is that, with precious little time run in dry conditions this weekend, Lawson and Racing Bulls have a corresponding lack of input this weekend. The truncated practice sessions on Friday did see Lawson improve from 13th in FP1 to 6th in FP2.
“We spent a little bit of time doing long runs, but obviously it was cut short yesterday. And so we only have really a few laps in P1 to go off.[…] it’s the same for everybody in that regard, I guess.”
Over a full race distance, Lawson conceded that “I don’t know if we have that kind of pace in the dry. But then again, sometimes we surprise ourselves this year.[…] Honestly, I have no idea how we’re going to be in the race. I think we’ve done the right thing with downforce and things like that. But I think we’ll see. We’ll find out pretty quickly tomorrow.”
