06/09/2025 23:00
Liam Lawson has conceded to enduring a "soul-destroying" moment
that resulted in him equalling his worst qualifying display of the
season. Lawson will start from last on the grid at Monza after his
second hot lap in Q1 was deleted for a track limits violation at
the first Lesmo. The previous occasion was his second and
ultimately last race with Red Bull in China. The New Zealander was
in a safe position after his first run, and Racing Bulls was
feeling confident of getting both cars into Q3 after making set-up
changes to improve high-speed braking stability. Lawson, though,
fell short due to his error, leaving him with a lap time from Q1
that fell almost half a second shy of the Q2 cut-off mark. "It was
a shame because the car was fast this weekend, but we tried to put
it all on that last lap, and it cost us," said Lawson, speaking to
the media, including RacingNews365 , after qualifying. "We just put
a bit of pressure on ourselves to try and put it all on that last
lap. But it's not an excuse. We should still have been able to do
it. "For us, I had a car in front through the middle sector, I got
a bit of understeer, and I went off, and that's what cost us. "It's
soul-destroying when you go through the first couple of corners and
you're already well up on yourself, and you just make a silly
mistake and run off. That's hard. "Obviously, you don't have to be
directly in front of somebody to give them dirty air. You can do it
from a couple of seconds in front, and when you're trying to push
the limits, I was expecting more front grip than I got." Lawson
will effectively start 18th, however, as team-mate Isack Hadjar and
Alpine's Pierre Gasly are due for pit-lane starts. As to what can
be achieved, he said: "Try and move forward. It's a lot of cars to
overtake, but we'll do our best." Lawson knows there is pace in the
car to allow him to move up through the field. "We had good long
run pace yesterday, and I think we've improved the car as well," he
said. "So it's a shame we didn't show it today. "The car has been
very fast this weekend. We've had a lot of issues that we've been
trying to get on top of. I think we got on top of them. We had no
issues in quali, but it just didn't go our way."
