Lawson and Hadjar during a fan interaction activity in Saudi Arabia

Lawson sees error in RB strategy but: 'I guess it worked out for Isack'

17:03, 26 Apr

byNorberto Mujica

Liam Lawson has been struggling to find his form, first at Red Bull Racing, and now at Racing Bulls with teammate Isack Hadjar having a better handle on things. The Kiwi driver now looks to Miami and hopes for a better result.

Speaking after the race, Lawson highlighted the different strategies he and teammate Hadjar were on, and the lack of pace in his VCARB02.

Lawson sees strategy working out for Hadjar, not so much for himself

"Well, we were on different strategies, so unfortunately my one just didn't work today," said the New Zealander to media like GPblog.

"We spent the race overtaking cars and I guess it worked out for Isack. I think he had a clean first stint and made the most of it. It's great for the team, obviously, to grab another point this weekend, especially when we didn't really have, I think, the pace yesterday for the top ten. So we'll obviously keep working towards Miami."

What does Lawson feel Racing Bulls are lacking for him to break through into the top 10? He answers: Just a bit of speed. It's very close at the moment, like [it] probably is, for us, less than a tenth was [separating us from reaching] Q3 yesterday. So it's just close, it's very, very close."

Lawson sees Racing Bulls need more speed and hopes for a better Miami outing

In the end, his overall assessment of the team's performance in Jeddah was an indication of progress, but ultimately still the team are not quite there yet. "I think it's definitely the fastest we've been, but yeah, just unfortunately not good enough."

Lawson then set his sights on Miami, and basing his outlook on the team's performance in Florida last year, he's hopeful for a better result.

"We didn't quite have the speed for the top ten yesterday so we'll try and work on improving this for Miami. It's a track I haven't done but I'm quite excited for and the car was pretty strong there last year."

Isack Hadjar was also dubbed by Guenther Steiner as the next driver in line to take over the second seat at Red Bull Racing should Yuki Tsunoda fail to deliver the performances expected by the Austrian team's higher-ups. However, there are no indications of this as chief advisor Helmut Marko and team principal Christian Horner have praised the Japanese driver's outings for Red Bull.