Lack of pre-season testing hurt Red Bull debut but it's 'no excuse'

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Liam Lawson refuses to make excuses for his poor start to the season at Red Bull, but admits he would have benefited from more pre-season running in one of the team’s cars.

Red Bull announced its decision to promote Lawson in place of Sergio Perez after the end of last season. Lawson spent the last six races of 2024 driving for their second team, now known as Racing Bulls.

However given the specific handling characteristics of Red Bull’s chassis, which other drivers have struggled with, Lawson said he would have benefited from more running in one of their older cars. Other rookies such as Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Jack Doohan benefited from extensive testing programmes in their teams’ older cars.

Earlier in the Chinese Grand Prix weekend Lawson remarked he ‘needs time and doesn’t have a lot’. While this was taken by some as an indication Red Bull is already considering whether to replace him, Lawson said he was referring to the limited track time he has in their cars.

“We’re in the season, we’re two races in and we’re racing,” he told Sky. “It’s something that you’d love to have, 60 test days and things like that, and I know a lot of the other guys tested a lot out of season.

“Unfortunately, it’s not something we did. It’s not something we can do in this [year’s] car anyway. So it’s just one of those things, it’s not an excuse, it’s just something that I’ve got to get on top of as quickly as I can.”

Lawson qualified last for both races in Shanghai. He opted to start the grand prix from the pit lane in order to make changes to his car’s suspension. However he said this did not improve the car for him and he felt more competitive in the sprint race.

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“We tried to do something quite aggressive today with the set-up,” he said. “That’s why we started from the pit lane, mostly to learn something and get an idea.

“I think we definitely learned something and it just didn’t work today. Looking at the sprint yesterday, we were a lot more competitive, able to overtake cars and stuff. Today it was just a lot more difficult so it’s something we’ll learn from but obviously there’s plenty that I’ve got to work on personally as well.”

“The direction we went today was to basically […] make the car a bit easier in a lot of ways and just help the balance,” he explained. “But unfortunately it just went the wrong way and it made the car just a lot slower, basically. So it’s the way it is and it’s something I’ve got to get my head around.”

Lawson finished the grand prix in 15th place, 20 seconds outside of the points places.