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Liam Lawson’s Formula 1 career to date has been entwined with that of the driver who he replaces for the rest of 2024.
Had Daniel Ricciardo not crashed and broken his hand at the banked Turn 3 during FP2 at Zandvoort last year, Lawson might never have been given his F1 shot.
But the impact he made during the five-race stand-in stint all-but guaranteed he would get a full-time drive in the future.
Even at the time it was impressive enough to trigger frustration that he wasn’t going to be part of the Red Bull teams’ initial 2024 race line-up, and made Lawson a lurking threat to any underperforming parts of that line-up.
THE TOUGH DEBUT
Lawson was always up against it on his debut at Zandvoort. He had never driven the AlphaTauri AT04 when he was pitched into a wet FP3 session, and hadn’t even banked an enormous amount of simulator running with it given the majority of his virtual mileage was in the Red Bull. His last outing in F1 machinery had come the previous December in the Abu Dhabi young driver test.
After an understandably tentative run in the wet FP3, albeit with a spin at Turn 13 that resulted in him nosing into the inside wall, Lawson qualified last with a deficit of four tenths of a second to team-mate Yuki Tsunoda. That was respectable on paper, but he confessed to being too conservative on his second set of intermediates and felt there was more in the car.
Simply surviving the early stages of a race that started dry and quickly turned wet was a challenge, but he kept it clean. While he was hit with a 10-second penalty, that was for impeding Kevin Magnussen in the pits while having to hold back thanks to Tsunoda’s slow double-stack stop ahead.
He showed respectable pace in the race and finished a respectable 13th, ahead of Tsunoda, who had a five-second penalty, despite finishing behind on the road.
It was an impressive start, but realistically could only ever be a foundation given the late call up.
THE FIRST POINTS
Monza followed, where Lawson performed very credibly. He lapped just 0.164s off Tsunoda and started 12th. He finished 11th in the race despite being one of a minority of drivers to two-stop, although there was no comparison with Tsunoda, who failed to start after a pre-race engine failure.
Then came the high-point of Lawson’s stint: the Singapore Grand Prix weekend where he scored two points for ninth place after reaching Q3.
Although still lacking the edge of pace Tsunoda had (speed that only manifested itself in Q1), Lawson impressed with the way he felt his way cautiously into the weekend but then ramped up the pace when it counted.
In the race, he slipped to 12th at the start and a slow pitstop cost him a place to Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, but he moved into the points when he stayed out on hard tyres as others pitted under a virtual safety car.
Although he was overtaken by both Red Bulls, with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez enduring a nightmare weekend, he shook out ninth after George Russell crashed his Mercedes on the final lap.
STARRING AT SUZUKA
Lawson was frustratingly just outside the top 10 in the next race at Suzuka, where he qualified three tenths slower than Tsunoda and just missed out on a place in Q3.
But in the race he battled with Tsunoda, pulling off an impressive overtaking move into Degner 1 on lap one but then losing the position to an undercut at the first pitstops.
However, Lawson undercut his way back ahead thanks to Tsunoda running five laps longer in the middle stint. He held off his team-mate, but given the 24s deficit to 10th-placed Pierre Gasly's Alpine it was clear the AlphaTauri wasn’t quite quick enough to score points.
ENDING ON A LOW
Lawson’s five weekends finished with a bitterly disappointing weekend in Qatar. On his first visit to the Lusail track, he had just one free practice session under the sprint weekend format and lacked confidence in the car in the high-speed turns. That meant he was eliminated in Q1.
In the sprint, he spun into the gravel on the first lap, then had a subdued run in the grand prix to 17th place and felt that “we just had no raw speed today”.
HIGH STANDARDS
What stood out was how frustrated Lawson was with what amounted to just one disappointing weekend out of five. Overall, he’d made a strong case but he wasn’t excusing himself for finishing on a low.
After the race in Qatar, I asked him how satisfied he was with the run of races given it had potentially changed his career direction, and he gave an answer that made it very clear how high the standards that he had set himself were.
“The races up to this point were going pretty well, but this one definitely doesn’t help that,” said Lawson
“It’s pretty disappointing to finish my run of races like this.”
However, it was clear that was not going to be the last F1 would see of Lawson, whose accomplished performances across his unexpected five-event run meant he wouldn’t be ignored for long.
