Lawson qualifies second fastest in Baku

| Photographer Credit: Red Bull Media

Liam Lawson has again showed how quick he is in Azerbaijan after setting the second quickest time in the FIA Formula 2 Championship qualifying session in Baku. Fellow Kiwi Marcus Armstrong also continued his form this season qualifying fourth fastest.

“It’s a good starting point,” commented Lawson. “Here the warm-up was quite compromised, and basically, I never had the temp in the tyres and never had that confidence starting the lap. So the first lap, especially the first sector, was quite under the limits but it was a decent lap. And then the next one, I got halfway around the lap and going into Turn 15 there was a flag to say that something was on track.

“I also had a radio message as well over the lap. I didn’t hear what it was, but it sounded very panicky and I wasn’t sure what was going on. Finishing the lap, there wasn’t a huge improvement from the first one, so like Jüri (Vips) I wasn’t really sure either, to be honest. I know Jüri says he had time left in his lap. We definitely did. The car was really good today. So little bit disappointing knowing the potential we had, but it’s a solid start to the weekend.

Having narrowly missed out on pole position last year, Jüri Vips set out to make amends with a last-minute charge to P1 in a highly competitive Formula 2 Qualifying session in Baku. The Hitech Grand Prix driver had been stuck down in 10th following his opening run, but a surprise burst of pace was enough to put him 0.163s clear of Liam Lawson – as Dennis Hauger made it an all-Red Bull junior top three.

“Obviously, the first focus is the Sprint Race,” said Lawson. “Getting a good start and trying to make up positions on Lap 1.

“From there we’ve shown the car is fast today, so hopefully, we have that speed in the races and then we can try and move forward as far as we can. For us, we’ve lost a huge amount of points so far this year and we, and myself as well, need to get on top of that this weekend.”

FIA F2 Track times – NZ
Sprint Race – Saturday 9:30pm
Feature Race – Sunday 7:00pm

Qualifying results

1/  Jüri Vips 1’53.762
2/  Liam Lawson 1’53.925
3/  Dennis Hauger 1’53.973
4/  Marcus Armstrong 1’53.977
5/  Felipe Drugovich 1’54.000
6/  Richard Verschoor 1’54.029
7/  Logan Sargeant 1’54.194
8/  Jehan Daruvala 1’54.201
9/  Frederik Vesti 1’54.247
10/  Jake Hughes 1’54.356
11/  Jack Doohan 1’54.363
12/  Theo Pourchaire 1’54.440
13/  Ayumu Iwasa 1’54.483
14/  Roy Nissany 1’54.727
15/  Marino Sato 1’54.732

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