Lawson faces challenge: 'Haven't experienced it before in F1'

Liam Lawson replaced Daniel Ricciardo midway through the weekend last week, meaning his preparation for his first time in F1 was not ideal. For the Italian Grand Prix, the New Zealander knows what is to come much more than Zandvoort last weekend. He is happy with how the first and second free practice sessions went at the Monza circuit.

"We completed everything we wanted today, which is important, and we still have some more time tomorrow during FP3 to prepare for qualifying," Lawson said after the first day, in which he finished 13th and 18th.

The new qualifying format requires drivers to use the hard tyres in Q1 and mediums in Q2. Beforehand, softs are always bolted to the car. "It's something I haven’t experienced in Formula 1, but I’ll just focus on tyre warm-up to extract the maximum out of them, especially from the hard compound tyre in Q1."

Lawson happy with AlphaTauri

Lawson feels in place at AlphaTauri and hopes to get everything out of it. "Yuki’s been great as a teammate, and Daniel offered all the advice he could before the race last week, so they’ve been super supportive, and so has the entire team, trying to get me up to speed as quickly as possible. It’s just about improving and focusing on feeling comfortable with everything behind the wheel and operating the car.”