Liam Lawson has had a solid weekend thus far at the F1 Dutch GP as the Kiwi grabbed a P8 in Saturday’s Qualifying.
However, his teammate, Isack Hadjar, took the field by surprise as he stormed to a P4. Lawson finished almost three tenths behind the rookie. Despite the difference between the teammates, they both finished inside the top ten and looked to be quick around the Zandvoort track. The pace of the Racing Bulls looks to be promising ahead of the Grand Prix.
When speaking about the Qualifying session, the Racing Bulls driver was disappointed as he had outpaced his French teammate in Q1 and Q2. In fact his time in the final segment was slower by 0.117s.
“I think it was very promising to Q3, and we went slower in Q3, which is what’s knocked us back there, so it’s frustrating. Up until that point, it was feeling very, very good, but you’re trying to sit the car in the right place, expecting what the track’s going to do and it’s hard to do that sometimes. So we missed out today on that, and it’s frustrating. But, obviously, tomorrow’s important.”
No progression in Q3
While the Racing Bulls showed a strong performance today, Lawson remains puzzled as to how he did not finish higher than P8. When asked if the wind was the problem, Lawson replied:
“It’s really gusty here, so throughout it definitely makes a difference. You can just get unlucky with wind gusts, it’s something that I’ll find out afterwards. Tyres are very sensitive as well and having the right balance makes a difference. It’s a bit puzzling because the natural progression is to jump a couple of tenths each session, but for whatever reason, we didn’t in Q3.”
At the end of Q3, the reality for most drivers was that there was no track evolution to help them go quicker. Very few were able to knock down their previous effort.
Consistently quick car
The Red Bull sister team have had ups and downs this season. Currently the team sits eighth in the Constructors’ Championship with 45 points.
The team has been through quite a few changes as the season begun with Lawson in Red Bull while Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar filled the Racing Bulls seats. However, after only two races, changes took place and Lawson was back at Racing Bulls.
Still, the team have looked quick in the last couple of races and this weekend, it looks even better.
The Racing Bulls driver continued on to be asked if the car was performing better than anticipated this weekend.
“We expected it to be good, but I think to have a car on the second row is better than we were expecting. It’s nice to drive a quick car and hopefully tomorrow it helps us in the race.
“We’re probably quite consistently quick. There are some teams that have been quite up and down, some teams are quicker than us sometimes, but then not as quick as the others and we’re sort of consistently good. Which is good, but we want to try and make another step, which is the thing we’ve done today.”
Good chance to secure points
The last couple of race weekends before the summer break were Lawson’s best this season. He secured his first points in Monaco, while his most recent points were achieved last time out in Hungary. Austria was his best ever F1 result with P6.
Undoubtably the Racing Bulls driver looks to battle for higher finishing positions and more points now that F1 has returned. When asked if a P5 finish would be possible in Sunday’s Grand Prix, the Kiwi revealed it would be difficult.
“It will be tough, but we’re trying to grab every point we can and tomorrow we have a good chance to score some.“
Lastly, Lawson explained that it is nice to be familiar with tracks, such as Zandvoort, as he has driven them at least once before.
“It’s good to go to tracks you know, a lot of tracks I enjoy driving as well, some pretty cool ones that we go through towards the end of the year, so looking forward to going back.”
