Liam Lawson disappoints in Australia qualifying on his Red Bull debut – Helmut Marko calls for patience, but where would Sergio Perez have finished?
Liam Lawson had a disappointing qualifying in Australia. The young New Zealander, who was brought to Red Bull from Racing Bulls to shine as Max Verstappen’s teammate, was eliminated in Q1. With a deficit of 0.578 seconds to make it into Q2 and 1.076 seconds behind Verstappen, it was a difficult start.
Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport consultant, reacts to Lawson’s performance on Sky: “Now we have to let him cool down and then we’ll just discuss the fact that the whole weekend hasn’t gone perfectly and look ahead. But you just have to be patient and wait for three or four races before the potential really shows.”
Liam Lawson, the only one of the 20 drivers to have never driven at the Albert Park Circuit before the weekend, takes a sober view of the situation after qualifying. He admits that missing the third free practice session affected his performance: “I think missing FP3 this morning was really costly for us.”
Marko suspects that he may have put too much pressure on himself to show the team what he can do: “He didn’t have any third practice session at all and then he just wanted to show what he could do, and unfortunately it went wrong,” said the Austrian.
Perez as a benchmark: Where would the Mexican have finished?
An additional pressure on Lawson arises from the expectations that Red Bull has of its new teammate due to the weaknesses of Sergio Perez. In their time together, Perez was unable to keep up with Verstappen in many races and qualifying sessions and was on average 0.561 seconds slower than the world champion.
This gap made it difficult for Red Bull to win the Constructors’ Championship and Lawson was brought in to attack the team standings again. But how well would Perez have performed in Melbourne anyway? Extrapolating the average gap of 0.561 seconds, the Mexican would have also been eliminated in Q1 in 17th place, tied with Nico Hülkenberg in the Sauber.
Despite the difficulties in qualifying, Lawson is optimistic and emphasizes that there were positive aspects to his performance: “We were about half a second faster than before before turn six and nine, so we would have improved in the second qualifying phase,” he believes. But several mistakes in the last sector ruined a good lap.
“I think the tires were already starting to degrade there,” Lawson analyzed. A phenomenon that team-mate Verstappen also spoke of after qualifying. But Marko also sums up: ‘He overdid it a bit. Wanted too much there and simply didn’t have enough expertise to implement it in the end.’
Marko calls for patience with Lawson
Helmut Marko emphasizes that young drivers like Kimi Antonelli or Lawson are under a lot of pressure and it is important not to judge them too quickly: “You can tell when the pressure is on the young guys, that it’s not that easy. You just have to be patient.”
Lawson himself did not want to be discouraged by the disappointing performance: “I think we took a step with the car today, regardless of that,” he says, and is confident for Sunday’s race. In particular, the predicted changeable weather conditions could help him: “I would love to have some rain tomorrow,” says Lawson.
Despite the partially unsuccessful qualifying for Red Bull, Marko is pleased with the performance of the sister team Racing Bulls: “But we have the other young star, [Isack] Hadjar, who did a great job.” While Hadjar just missed out on Q2 in eleventh place, his teammate Yuki Tsunoda even made it into fifth place.
