Liam Lawson has explained his qualifying woes on his Red Bull debut, as the Kiwi was knocked out in Q1 in Melbourne.

Lawson was unable to escape the drop zone in the first part of qualifying, with the Red Bull driver knocked out in 18th place after aborting his final lap.

Liam Lawson: I shouldn’t be going off in qualifying

Lawson entered qualifying on the back foot, with Red Bull overcoming a power unit issue that had prevented their new driver from taking part in the third practice session on Saturday morning.

Unable to set a time in the session, it further exacerbated Lawson’s relative lack of experience at the Albert Park circuit – the only driver on the grid to have never driven at the Melbourne venue in any category before.

Red Bull managed to get the power unit issue resolved in time for qualifying, with Lawson joining the queue to head out on track at the start of Q1.

But Q1 was as far as he could go, with an off-track moment putting him out of sequence with his flying laps as he ran wide at Turn 3. Scampering through the gravel, Lawson kept his RB21 out of the gravel as he managed to snake onto the escape road and resume, but it meant plenty of pressure was on him for his final run.

On that final lap, the first half of the lap appeared to be lining up to get through – only for a wayward moment through Turn 10 to force him to back off a little, before a slide at the penultimate corner meant he simply backed off and returned to the pits, aware that he would not improve.

“We expected the start of quali to be tough, to be honest,” Lawson told Sky F1 afterward.

“The first laps, we expected to be off, and then we were just planning on building through the session, but obviously going off on that second lap sort of put everything out of order a bit.

“Then the last lap was good, honestly, just until the last sector where I just had a big drop.

“Missing P3 obviously doesn’t help any of this, but I shouldn’t be going off in quali so…”

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Asked how he felt the final lap was playing out, Lawson said he felt a big improvement had been on the cards and that Q2 would have been possible.

“Before Turn 9, we were about half a second up,” he said.

“Then, obviously, we would have kept improving, but I already had a snap through Turns 9 and 10.

“I think the tyres were already starting to drop there. So that’s something we’ve just been battling this weekend. Obviously it’s something that we missed practicing in FP3.

“We definitely overheated at the end of the lap, but I don’t… obviously it’s something we’ll look into it. Would it have helped doing FP3?

“I think today was a sort of quali prep day. Everybody was using soft tyres this morning. I think we had the car in a good window. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. And the lap we were on was perfectly fine.

“I just had a snap through the high speed. I think that overheated the tyres, and then the last sector was basically gone from there.”

Having missed out on his third practice runs, Lawson laughed when asked if he was more optimistic about racing well through the field on higher fuel – particularly with teammate Max Verstappen claiming third on the grid.

“I haven’t really done much high-fuel running,” he said.

“I think we made a big step today, or at least Max did this morning, and the car was in a better window, which was positive. So, yeah, I think obviously for me, just not doing the laps made it pretty tough. But obviously, where we’re starting, it’s gonna be very, very tough tomorrow.

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