Red Bull driver Liam Lawson has admitted he’s had a “very, very” tough start to his time at the team.
The New Zealander has failed to make it out of any Q1 or SQ1 sessions, and will start the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix from the back of the grid after another frustrating day.
In the first part of qualifying, teammate Max Verstappen set a lap time 0.75 seconds quicker than the rookie in supposedly the same car.
That’s a percentage of lap time difference of 100.82%. That’s slower than Albon’s record against the Dutchman (100.75%), Gasly (100.58%), and Sergio Perez in 2024 (100.69%).
It’s a record that, as Lawson himself admits, is “just not good enough.”
Speaking to F1 TV, Liam Lawson said; “It’s very, very tough and I can get upset at the traffic issues and the things like that, but it shouldn’t be the difference between me getting through or not.”
“I have a whole lot of things to sort out myself before I can look at getting a little bit of traffic and things like that. It’s just frustrating.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t really have time but it’s just one of those things. To drive a Formula 1 car, it takes 100% confidence in what you’re doing. It’s not that I don’t feel confident, the window is just so small… and it’s that I need to get a handle on,” Lawson added when speaking to Sky Sports.
“I don’t know how else to put it really, it’s just not good enough.”
Another Horror Day For Liam Lawson
After struggling last week in Melbourne, and failing to improve much on Day One in Shanghai, Lawson started the sprint race from 19th on the grid.
He had qualified last, but a penalty for Nico Hulkenberg moved Lawson up the grid.
Liam Lawson would move forward in the race, but not far. In the 19 lap sprint, he finished 14th, 35 seconds behind teammate Verstappen.
Whilst traffic will account for some of that time deficit, that’s an average of 1.84 seconds a lap slower.
Given Verstappen’s monumental tyre drop-off toward the end of the race as well, it shows how far back a poor qualifying can set you.
A recovery to 14th sounds acceptable in a short race, but with Tsunoda and Hadjar both finishing ahead, it put more pressure on Lawson in just his second race for the team.
In qualifying, it almost felt like the inevitable was already going to happen for Liam Lawson.
He qualified 20th and last again for Red Bull, in the same car that Max Verstappen placed on the second row of the grid.
The Two Main Problems For Liam Lawson – Opinion
There’s two big issues facing Lawson, neither of which he has much say over.
Both of them he knows all too well himself.
The first is the car itself. With Verstappen’s extreme driving style, the car has been developed towards his driving style over the last near-decade.
That’s made it very difficult for any other driver to come to terms with how the Red Bull handles.
In many ways, it feels like Verstappen is the only one who can tame the bull, whilst everyone else just gets thrown off.
The second main issue, as Lawson himself referenced speaking to the media, is time.
It’s well known how ruthless Red Bull are with their drivers, with them often getting very little time to turn their fortunes around.
This is the same team that kicked Pierre Gasly out the seat after just 12 races.
The time window for Lawson is narrow, and the performance window for the car itself feels narrower still.
For Lawson to still have a job by the end of the season, he has a very tight path to squeeze down.