Liam Lawson has spoken again about his time at Red Bull. The New Zealander was promoted at the start of the season, becoming Max Verstappen's new teammate. After some excellent performances in Racing Bulls, expectations surrounding the young driver were very high, but the anticipation of seeing him in a top team was not rewarded.
After just two races, Lawson was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda. This decision shook the New Zealander, who admitted in a recent interview that his lack of knowledge of the car - as well as the Melbourne and Shanghai circuits - played a key role:
"If you look at how other teams have approached the idea of bringing in a young driver and consider the test days, the time spent in the car, the amount of testing that, for example, Kimi [Antonelli] did in the past before competing this year, we did none of that" he said.
"It was two weekends on two tracks I had never raced on before, one of which was a sprint weekend. They weren't easy weekends. We had reliability issues in testing in Bahrain, and also in Melbourne. In China, we took a gamble with the organisation to try and learn something. For me, it was as if it was helping me grow for the future, to have a better understanding of the car. So I was happy to drive with that kind of set-up. That performance was then used to demote me from the team, basically," he added.
A joint fault
Although everything was so early, Lawson took some of the responsibility for this failure, pointing out how he could have performed better: "There were some unforeseen circumstances at that time that made things difficult" he admitted. "They weren't clean weekends. And by my standards, they weren't good enough. Obviously, I was trying my best and trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible."
"Looking back, I know there are many things I could have handled and dealt with differently. If I had known I had little time available, maybe I would have been different. But at the time, I didn't. Maybe I was a little naive, but I thought I would grow and have plenty of time to learn," he concluded.
Irony of fate
At the halfway point of the season, Lawson had scored 20 points, ten more than Yuki Tsunoda (current Red Bull driver). The RB21 shows signs of weakness even when driven by Max Verstappen. Seeing the satellite team perform better than the main team gives pause for thought. In recent months, Lawson has managed to settle back in at Faenza, finding a good feeling with the car and his new teammate Isack Hadjar, creating a solid and competitive team.
With Formula 1 on holiday, we just have to wait and see what the second half of the season has in store for Liam Lawson and Racing Bulls, who are battling Haas, Sauber and Aston Martin for sixth place in the constructors' standings.
Read the original version (italian): https://www.formula1.it/news/26323/1/lawson-senza-freni-red-bull-non-mi-ha-consentito-di-crescere
