Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team driver Liam Lawson’s latest Formula One race could be described as solid. Finishing 16th in the Mexico City F1 Grand Prix, after starting from P12, Lawson didn’t do anything wrong and drove a consistently strong race which was hindered by forces outside of his control.
Arguably his destiny was set in qualifying when his teammate crashed with 10 seconds to go in Q2, bringing out the red flag and stopping any hopes of Lawson getting into Q3 and a top ten grid position.
“Yesterday, Yuki’s crash was costly as the domino effect was that it also prevented Liam from getting to Q3, but that’s motor racing,” said Laurent Mekies (Team Principal). The weekend was derailed from that point onwards and on the opening lap of the race, Yuki was the unfortunate victim of some squeezing, which is the sort of incident that can happen in the midfield.”
This was an example of how the little things in the lead up to a Grand Prix can have important, and detrimental consequences.
Had he started further up the grid then there is a good chance that he will have been fighting with RB’s rival in the Constructor’s Championship, HAAS F1. Kevin Magnussen (Haas F1) qualified and finished in seventh while teammate Nico Hulkenberg qualified tenth and finished ninth. Both drivers finished in the points.
A positive for Lawson was his defending of a charging Sergio Perez. Perez had started from 18th and quickly made his way through the field until he reached Lawson. Lawson’s defence could be described as assertive. He was not going to make it easy and Perez could not get passed resulting in his dropping well behind and eventually pitting for new tyres.
“A frustrating race, not the result we wanted,” commented Liam. “With the speed we had this weekend we could have scored points.
“It’s very disappointing to come away with nothing this weekend, especially when we had a package that was strong. We needed that clean air and unfortunately spent the whole race behind the gear box of another car. We had incidents all throughout and we tried the strategy that worked last week but it just didn’t work today. We’ll learn from that, and we’ll try and do a better job next week.”
Lawson again started on hard tyres and went long, pitting for medium tyres later in the race. Having initially moved up to tenth and holding that position, Lawson was knocked back further after contact from Franco Colapinto returning to the track after an ‘off’, damaging his front wing and then dropping down to the back of the field after having to stop for a replacement nose.
“Liam was on an inverted strategy to try and jump some of the cars ahead of us,” said Mekies. “He had a strong first stint and some good fights throughout the race, but it did not really work for him, as he found a lot of traffic in the second part of the race. The contact with Colapinto pretty much ended any slight chance to fight for points.”
A solid result. Effectively Lawson beat his teammate, out-dueled Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez and finished the race. We now move on to the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in Sao Paulo and the Brazilian F1 Grand Prix with a Sprint race at 3am Sunday 4 November (NZ time) and the Grand Prix timed to go at 6am Monday morning NZ time.
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