Liam Lawson insists that a scrappy Qatar GP won’t impact his future prospects despite it coming just as Red Bull makes up its mind about who will replace Sergio Perez in 2025.
Lawson spun at the first safety car restart in Qatar, forcing Valtteri Bottas off the road. He subsequently received a 10-second penalty.
Later in the race both he and team mate Yuki Tsunoda were switched to soft tyres in an attempt to find some performance.
However that gamble didn’t pay off, and they finished 13th and 14th, with the Japanese driver ahead.
The result dropped the team further away from Alpine and Haas in the battle for sixth in the constructors’ table.
Lawson remains favourite to land the RBR seat, and he insists that one frustrating Sunday won’t impact his future.
“Honestly, nothing’s really changed from where I sit,” he said when asked by this writer about the unfortunate timing.
“We had some positives this weekend. Sprint quali was strong for us, and obviously yesterday, we struggled more in quali.
“But after the spin to be honest we caught the field and had okay pace. So there’s points to take away from it, but overall we didn’t have the package this weekend to fight against the teams we need to fight against.”
Lawson took full responsibility for the Bottas incident, apologising to the Finn when they met in the media pen after the race.
“It was just my bad,” he said. “I thought we had really good temperature to be honest, like I worked a lot the tyres on the restart, under the safety car, went for a move and half way around the corner, I realised I was sliding up the track towards him.
“And at that point, I just tried to get out of it honestly, because I was about to hit him. So I tried to check up and spun the car. I don’t know if we touched, I guess we did, but that was on me.”
He added: “Obviously, he did nothing wrong. I didn’t expect him to stay out there, to be honest. And because he did, obviously I was sliding up the track. But it was my fault.”
Lawson admitted that the soft tyre gamble didn’t work.
“I think we weren’t going to score points from where we were. So we just tried something soft. Softs obviously didn’t work.
“We had a small issue as well that we were managing at the end. But, yeah, it’s just been a tough day. But honestly, I put ourselves in that position when I spun the car.”
Adam Cooper F1 