Red Bull team principal Christian Horner defended his new driver Liam Lawson after he was eliminated in the first round of qualifying on his debut for the team.
Lawson made a mistake on his final run in Q1 which cost him his chance to progress beyond the first round of qualifying. He lost time earlier in the day when a power unit problem prevented him running in final practice.
“It was a tough day for him because losing [final practice] at a track that he’s never raced at – he’s the only driver on the grid not to have raced here – immediately put him on the back foot,” Horner told the official F1 channel.
“His first run was pretty decent, considering the lack of mileage, but then unfortunately a lock-up on the second run, a mistake on the third run, the pressure’s just building and building at that point. So you can’t judge him on today’s performance, but hopefully he can have a reasonable run tomorrow.”
Lawson was one second slower than his team mate Max Verstappen in Q1, the largest gap between any pair of team mates who completed laps.
“Max is a machine of a team mate to be next to,” said Horner. “You can’t judge Liam on what we’ve seen so far. It’d be very unfair to do that.
“He’s had a really difficult run so far. Let’s see about the race tomorrow, and then of course, as we get to tracks that he starts to know, I think he’ll start to come alive.”
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Horner praised the drivers from Red Bull’s second team, Racing Bulls, who both qualified ahead of Lawson. Yuki Tsunoda, whom Red Bull passed over for promotion to their team this year, took fifth on the grid.
“Yuki did a great job today and I have to commend Isack Hadjar as well,” said Horner. “I thought, of the rookies, he did an outstanding job. So it’s great for that team, great for Yuki to be to be right up there ahead of the Ferraris.”
However Horner said it was too soon to suggest Red Bull had promoted the wrong driver. “We’ve got a sample of one,” he said. “You have to remember how close Liam was to him. Isack Hadjar as well is doing a great job.
“Yuki, you can see that experience is playing through now. He’s an experienced grand prix driver, and he’s using it, he’s driving with his head, he’s doing a good job, and it’s good for him to be starting at the sharp end of the grid. It’s exactly what he needs to be doing to keep saying, ‘look I’m still here’.”
Lawson admitted he was unhappy with his performance. “We expected the start of quali to be tough, to be honest,” he told Sky afterwards. “The first laps were expected to be off and then we were just planning on building through the session.
“But obviously going off on that second lap sort of put everything out of order a bit. Then the last lap was good, honestly, just until the last sector where I just had a big drop.”
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Lawson said his problem in final practice “obviously doesn’t help any of this but I also shouldn’t be going off in quali.”
He said he was on course to make a significant improvement on his final lap but struggled with his tyres in the final sector.
“Before turn nine we were about half a second up,” he said. “And then obviously we would have just kept improving.
“But I already had a snap through nine and 10, I think the tyres were already starting to drop there. That’s something we’ve just been battling this weekend and obviously something that we missed practising in P3.”
However Lawson believes Red Bull have made progress with their car. “We feel like we made a step with the car today, regardless of this. Obviously Max is in a good position so we definitely made a step and obviously the weather tomorrow is variable so let’s see.”
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