Liam Lawson completed his first run in the Red Bull RB21 during pre-season testing for the 2025 Formula 1 season.
The Red Bull driver completed 58 laps on track in the morning session, setting the second quickest time from Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Lawson will be hopeful that he can get to grips quickly with the RB21 so he can challenge Max Verstappen early in the season, while also bringing in valuable points for Red Bull where Sergio Perez lost out in 2024.
It was a largely uneventful F1 test session for Lawson as he put in the laps before he spun during one of his runs exiting Turn 2, causing him to damage his tyres.
Christian Horner explained the main cause of the spin when speaking to media, making one suggestion according to journalist Mat Coch on BlueSky.
Christian Horner suggests Liam Lawson caught out by gust of wind
Lawson’s spin potentially exposed a weakness in Red Bull’s car, as their sensitive ride height appeared to be the main cause of why the New Zealander lost the car.
As he got onto the kerb at Turn 2, Lawson reacted to oversteer before the car turned into the slide, causing him to loop around at Turn 3.
The conditions are unseasonably cold in Bahrain, with the wind speed also quite high at 9kph (5mph). Horner believes this was the reason for the spin, which forced Lawson to abandon his run earlier in the day.
“Christian Horner has played down Liam Lawson’s spin earlier today. Suggests it was just a gust of wind that caught him out,” wrote Coch.
Fernando Alonso’s mysterious testing crash caused by ‘gust of wind’ five years on
The comments from Horner are reminiscent of what happened to Fernando Alonso five years ago during F1 testing, when the Spaniard suffered a mysterious crash at the Circuit de Catalunya Barcelona.
Alonso was testing for McLaren for the first time with their Honda power units, when he suffered a crash exiting Turn 3.
Little is known exactly what happened, but according to eye witness Sebastian Vettel his car veered to the side of the road and crashed into the concrete barriers on the inside.
McLaren would go on to blame it on a gust of wind tipping the car into a spin, while Alonso was airlifted to hospital as a precaution. He would later dispute the account from McLaren, although the crash itself forced him to miss the opening round of the season in Melbourne.
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