Liam Lawson has cited Qualifying as the main area in which he hopes to improve entering into the second half of the season, with the Racing Bulls driver feeling that his best weekends have occurred when he has had a strong performance on Saturday.
The 2025 campaign started off in eventful style for Lawson, having initially partnered Max Verstappen at Red Bull before a swap with Yuki Tsunoda saw him return to the team’s sister outfit after just two races.
Since then the New Zealander has been getting back into the rhythm at the wheel of the VCARB 02, with a particularly strong run of late seeing him convert a top-10 grid slot into points at three of the last four Grands Prix.
As such, when asked ahead of F1’s summer break about the areas that he will be focusing on as ones to improve during the remainder of the campaign, Lawson responded: “If I was to just pick an area, overall, it’s Qualifying.
“With how important it is at the moment because everybody’s very close, even on tracks that are maybe easier to overtake, it’s still difficult because you don’t have a three, four, five-tenth pace advantage. You have like a one or two-tenth pace advantage, and that’s very hard to overtake.
“Qualifying is very important, it sets up your weekend. Where our weekends have fallen away, at least on my side, has been normally in an average Qualifying. Where our weekends have been strong, it’s when we qualify well.
“That’s the main target: just extracting everything, making sure we have the car in the best place going into Qualifying, and then for me getting everything out of it and doing a better job.”
Reflecting back on the year so far, Lawson admitted that things have now become more stable following a frenetic start, and voiced his hope that Racing Bulls can continue to score good points during the second half of the season.
“It’s been busy,” the 23-year-old said. “It’s been a whirlwind, especially at the start of the year. Very unexpected, and what was probably a rocky start has now stabilised and we’re in a better place.
“The speed’s been there most of the year, and it’s nice that we’re finally able to get a couple of good results. As a whole, we need to be doing that more. To have two or three of those races over the first half of the season is not enough.
“Going forward into the second half of the year, we’re trying to replicate this more. Right now, with how close it is, it’s the little things that make a big difference. Trying to extract everything each weekend.”
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