Liam Lawson is “slowly” getting up to speed with Racing Bulls, Helmut Marko saying “generally that’s okay” as the New Zealander suffered yet another Q1 exit.

The start of Lawson’s first full season in Formula 1 has not gone to plan, so much so that he was demoted back to Racing Bulls after just two races with Red Bull.

Can Liam Lawson get off the mark starting P17?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Failing to score a single point or even get out Q1 in the RB21, Red Bull said they had a “duty of care” towards Lawson and sent him back to Racing Bulls and promoted Yuki Tsunoda in his stead.

However, behind the wheel of what is widely billed to be a kinder but slower car than the Red Bull, Lawson hasn’t been able to match his rookie team-mate Isack Hadjar’s performances in their two weekends together.

While Hadjar qualified inside the top ten and scored points in Japan, Lawson qualified 14th and lost places in the Grand Prix to finish 17th.

He was again behind Hadjar in Bahrain, the 20-year-old qualifying his VCARB02 in 12th place while Lawson was only 17th in his fourth Q1 exit of the F1 2025 championship.

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Racing Bulls blamed a DRS issue, chief technical officer Tim Goss explaining: “In the tricky conditions, Liam picked up a little wheelspin on exit from Turn 10 resulting in a small throttle lift to keep the car under control causing DRS to automatically close which caused him to lose vital speed on the straight, and cost [him] the place in Q2.”

But whether that’s an excuse that Marko can live with, the 81-year-old kept his cards close to his chest.

He told the media that Lawson is “slowly coming up to speed”, before adding: “Generally that is okay.”

Lawson, meanwhile, was frustrated with his performance in qualifying as he conceded that his DRS closing was his fault.

“I don’t know why it closed, but it’s obviously it was something I did,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “I’ll learn from it definitely, because it’s completely screwed us.

“But as to why that, I don’t know.

“It’s just a shame it seemed to be a pretty solid weekend up to the three decent sessions for us. Yeah, it’s been pretty good. I think we made a good step with the car today as well. FP3 was pretty strong for us. Qualy, the first lap was good.

“Just, yeah, just a shame that something like this has cost us.”

Still chasing his first points of the F1 2025 championship, Lawson admits it is going to be difficult to get off the mark starting down in 17th place.

“Obviously, when you’re buried, it’s not ideal for tyres and everything and speed, so it’s going to be quite tough,” he said.

“But obviously we feel we have the speed to move forward. We definitely feel we had the speed to be in Q2, maybe even Q3 today.

“So obviously we’ll try and move forward, but it’s going to be a tough race.”

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