F1 News
'All that did was make Red Bull very slow in Australia'
Sky Sports analyst believes that Red Bull Racing made the wrong set-up call on Liam Lawson's car for the Australian Grand Prix, saying that "all that did was make the car very, very slow."
In the New Zealander's first full season in the pinnacle of motorsport, his first race did not get off the the best of starts, crashing out in the wet conditions that fell onto the Albert Park circuit, with only one of the 2025 rookies finishing the race, which was the Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
However, the Austrian team made a change to his setup after a disappointing qualifying session saw him get knocked out in Q1. A change to his rear wing setting meant he started from the pit lane, but that change may not have helped in the changeable and tricky conditions of Melbourne, according to Kravitz.
Kravitz says Lawson's "poor" debut "not his fault"
"This car is not particularly quick, the Red Bull. I mean, it’s quick enough for P2 obviously and to be P3 on the grid, but you look at Liam Lawson’s problems today and you can understand how Red Bull would really take and how Max said, I’ll take a P2 while they try and figure it out.
"Liam Lawson was a DNF, all of the rookies apart from Kimi Antonelli crashed today. But Liam started from the pit lane with more downforce, a higher downforce rear wing and a new beam wing to try and stay out of trouble in the wet and all that did was make the car very, very slow. He made no impact with too much wing on the car, Liam Lawson, absolutely no impact and then spun and crashed in the same place as his Red Bull stablemate Isack Hadjar.
"So, a very poor showing all around that Liam Lawson, probably not his fault because they seemingly had too much wing on the car thinking it was the right thing to do, but it was not." Kravitz said.
Lawson looks back on 'terrible weekend'
Lawson himself looked back on a 'terrible weekend': "This whole weekend was pretty terrible. Today we were too slow at the start and then we gambled. It nearly worked, but it wasn’t to be. Starting from the pitlane was tough and we just didn’t really have the speed in the first stint on the inter. We struggled with the fronts too much, so we will analyse and look at that in detail before the next race.”
Lawson will be hoping to improve greatly from his performance in Melbourne at the Chinese Grand Prix, with the 2025 season opening up with a double header, meaning the New Zealander will have a quick opportunity to recover from a challenging start to his Red Bull career.
This article was created in collaboration with Hidde Korte
Want more Formula 1? Then follow GPblog on our various social media channels as well!