Liam Lawson says he just made most of the opportunity in F1 Singapore GP despite the start issues, as he praises Daniel Ricciardo for help.
In only his third outing in F1 Singapore GP, AlphaTauri’s Lawson secured his first career points as a replacement driver of Daniel Ricciardo. For the second race in a row he beat teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who suffered a hit from Sergio Perez on Lap 1.
In Monza, he couldn’t start due to an engine problem. For Lawson, it wasn’t the start he expected in Singapore GP where he lost places, something he wants to work upon. But as the race progressed, he hung on around the Top 10 places in different circumstances.
The last few laps saw him fend off Williams’ Alexander Albon and Red Bull’s Perez where the Mexican collided with the Thai to remove him from the competition. Although he lost the place to the Red Bull driver but he was still in 10th to score.
He eventually lucked in to finish ninth after the last lap crash for Mercedes’ George Russell. Considering that it is not clear for how long he can drive for AlphaTauri, Lawson is happy to make the most of the opportunity he is presented by Red Bull.
“I mean, I love being in Formula 1, just trying to make the most of this opportunity, this window I have,” said Lawson, who had his parents for the F1 weekend. “So yeah, I’ll try and keep maximizing. For me, the start, I need to get on top of. Because it’s now two weekends in a row that I’ve botched the start basically and lost a couple of positions.
“So, it’s just making our life more difficult. So that’s really the biggest loss of the race. And that’s on my part. So for the rest, I think we extracted everything out of the car. We didn’t quite have the race pace. To be honest, we kind of felt going into the race, it was going to be a little bit difficult because we felt this on Friday as well.
“But we tried to correct it as much as we could. So I think we maximized,” summed up Lawson, who also had praise for Ricciardo. The Australian was present in the engineering meets to help AlphaTauri as he waits to be cleared to drive. It is unclear at the moment if the Kiwi will drive in Suzuka or if the Aussie will make his return.
“It’s obviously, it’s very positive to have him here. He is very experienced and experience helps the team,” said Lawson. “So he’s been great to me as well since being back. So I think it’s definitely positive to have someone like him helping.”
Here’s Sergio Perez and Yuki Tsunoda on their incident