The best thing that can be said about Liam Lawson’s low point in his early struggle at Red Bull is that he is shouldering responsibility for his underperformance and aware it must be quickly rectified.
Lawson qualified slowest for the Chinese Grand Prix, repeating a limp performance from qualifying for the sprint race - which he also started last for.
This weekend has been a surprising step backwards for Lawson, insofar as his Red Bull debut in Australia was already poor yet China has been weaker still.
The gap is too big - three quarters of a second to Verstappen, despite having three runs to Verstappen’s single lap in Q1 – and the result too poor.
If Lawson was just a few tenths adrift it would be within the accepted and expected tolerance, hence the pressure being piled on already.
A forensic examination of his qualifying will take place between driver and team but the headline conclusions are predictable: too conservative in some places, too imprecise in others, resulting in a poorly put together lap each time.
What went wrong in qualifying
All three Q1 runs were compromised, and there were occasionally other variables that complicated things further.
On Lawson’s first run he caught a yellow flag for Jack Doohan’s spun Alpine then aborted the lap after a small lock-up into the hairpin at the end of the long back straight.
On the second run, on new tyres, Lawson had a big slide into the first corner that required a lot of correcting, and another moment into Turn 3.
He was slightly wide exiting Turn 9 - a signpost for a costly error on his final run - and got the final couple of corners wrong, shipping six tenths to Max Verstappen in the final sector alone. Lawson described that lap as “very messy” but thought the balance would “come to us a little bit” on the final run. If it did, it barely showed in the laptime.
There was a sub-optimal start as Lawson got told to hold his track position then was mugged by Pierre Gasly for the final corner, forcing him to check up slightly.
Not ideal, sure, but as he put it: “It just shouldn’t be the difference between me getting through to Q2.” In isolation it wasn’t. There were many moments around the lap where the time Lawson needed to scrape into Q2 - not much of a triumph but at least where he should have been - could have been found.
He was extremely cautious into the first corner, probably a consequence of the previous snaps, and after overslowing the car on entry was coming off-and-on the brakes (1, F1-Tempo image above) in unusual fashion trying to correct how much speed he was rolling through the corner with.
At its worst that yielded a surprise 30km/h speed difference (2) in the first phase of the corner, and cost him a quarter of a second (3) to Verstappen immediately.
This was repeated to a less pronounced degree in Turn 3, where Lawson was much more cautious on entry. Turn 3 has been the cause of repeated struggles in qualifying this weekend with Lawson struggling to get the car rotated, so again it was no surprise that his confidence and judgement seemed so compromised and another tenth was lost (4) overall here.
The next major loss came when Lawson ran too wide out of Turn 9 onto the exit kerb which pulled him off line through Turn 10 and delayed him getting on the throttle (1, image above). That meant he came off the corner a lot slower (2), and cost another couple of tenths (3) to Verstappen.
A similar amount of time was lost through the complex and down the back straight (1, image below), as Lawson’s cautious entry and slower run out was carried all the way to the hairpin - where a tiny bit of understeer after going in too hot cost another tenth (2).
Tough reality dawning
This weekend Lawson has sounded a lot more like a driver for whom the reality of getting this Red Bull to work has really dawned on him.
In Australia, he was optimistic that there were a combination of things holding him back in qualifying. Here it has seemed like a constant, futile battle to improve, and perhaps Lawson has been more exposed to the trickiness of the RB21 - which doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement on its predecessor, leaving even Verstappen less than thrilled with its traits - more in China.
“It's just really tough, honestly,” said Lawson. “The window is really small, that's known, but honestly it's not an excuse.
“I've got to get a handle on it. It was a messy session and had we not dealt with traffic and stuff it might have been OK, but to be honest it's still not good enough to be having those issues and that's the reason we're knocked out.
“We should be fast enough on our first lap. Shouldn't be an issue. I just need to get on top of it.”
There are mitigating circumstances. Lawson is inexperienced in F1, and in this position because of Red Bull’s own driver mismanagement.
For Red Bull to need to turn to a driver of 11 starts to partner Verstappen was already concerning, and for it to be lamenting that decision in the middle of only Lawson’s second weekend suggests the intention to do right by its new driver and give him time, and support, is already beginning to creak.
In addition, Lawson also had not driven in Melbourne before last weekend and does not know the Shanghai circuit either. It can be a very punishing one for newcomers and it’s a sprint weekend, putting a premium on rapid adaptation and not allowing for iterative improvements.
The problem for Lawson is that Isack Hadjar’s made a bit of a mockery of the caveats that apply to Lawson, seeing as the Racing Bulls rookie has qualified seventh ahead of Yuki Tsunoda.
'I don't have the time'
Lawson, to be fair to him, is not leaning on any excuses. He acknowledges that while time would be great, it’s a luxury he doesn’t have.
That’s not specifically a Red Bull reference - although he will be dropped at some point if he does not perform - it is a reflection of the reality of F1. This is hard. This car is even harder. Finding something as intangible as ‘feeling’ and ‘confidence’ is an inexact science, especially when weekends go by quickly.
“It's just time,” Lawson said of what he needs in order to improve.
“Unfortunately I don't really have time. “It's just one of those things...to drive a Formula 1 car takes 100% confidence in what you're doing and it's not that I don't feel confident but the window is so small, that right now I just seem to miss it.
“It's that I just need to get a handle of. I don't know how else to put it, it's just not good enough.”
Correcting this will not be easy. For all the praise Red Bull had previously heaped on Lawson for his mental robustness, his attitude, and the promise seen in his bit-part F1 seasons to date, he was already behind the curve coming into the season and is now desperately playing catch up while on the job.
The only consolation right now is the lack of performance is so obvious, and where Lawson is losing out is so easy to see, that theoretically there are huge chunks of laptime to gain by having a better feeling, being more confident, being more precise.
Tapping into that is the great unknown - whether it’s something that can change just by going to a more familiar track, or there’s something in the car to bring it closer to what Lawson needs at the cost of a bit of outright performance, or just in Lawson himself doing a better job of not getting thrown by what’s in his hands.
Early as it is in his Red Bull career, Lawson knows that he is in an environment where a deficit this large is unsustainable.
It would be surprising, confusing and career-threatening if it remained the norm.
