Still in the top-10
After a negative start to the season in Australia, with the first race of the world championship finishing in 13th place, the last two rounds of the world championship have instead concluded with quite satisfying results for Liam Lawson. While in China the New Zealander had taken 7th place in both the Sprint and the long race, at Suzuka the Racing Bulls driver repeated himself with another points finish, this time in ninth position.
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Safety Car: pros and cons
A race that, contrary to expectations following the lackluster performance in qualifying, turned into a comeback dictated in part by strategy and, above all, by luck due to the entry of the Safety Car on track, which allowed him to recover more positions. An episode that proved favorable to the New Zealander, the first to recognize that, without what happened, the final result would have been difficult to achieve: “I am very satisfied with today. Starting from where we were and the doubts we had because of yesterday’s problems, the team did a great job in rebalancing the car, which led to a solid race. The first part of the race was really tough, but we managed to find a better speed window during the Hard stint towards the end. We were also a bit lucky with the Safety Car, which helped us get into the points. Without it, it would have been difficult to finish where we did, so it’s good to bring home a positive result. That’s three points finishes in the last two races, which gives us good momentum heading into the break. I will spend some time training and with the team to reflect on the last month before Miami, as we continue to work to improve.”
The exact opposite, however, happened to teammate Arvid Lindblad. Surprisingly ninth in qualifying on a track never faced before in his career, the Briton entered the ‘list’ of drivers who paid a high price for the entry of the Safety Car following Oliver Bearman’s bad accident, to the point of dropping out of the points and falling back to 14th place, where Lawson’s race had started: “The moment the Safety Car came out is probably what penalized us the most today. I was in tenth position until then, and after that I slipped to fourteenth. From then on, we no longer had the pace to recover. It’s a shame, but we knew before the start that it would be more of a defensive than an offensive race. It’s disappointing not to have scored points today, but congratulations to the team and Liam. There were some things this weekend that didn’t go our way, but I’ll use the April break to work hard and put myself in the best possible position for Miami.”
