Liam Lawson retires from soaking Australian Grand Prix after disappointing weekend

It’s been as chaotic an Australian Grand Prix as we expected it to be, and with now Red Bull’s Liam Lawson crashing out of the Melbourne race.

As the rain started to come down once more, Turn 2 saw the driver spin under power, joining the likes of Fernando Alonso, Isack Hadjar, Carlos Sainz, Jack Doohan, and Gabriel Bortoleto, as he span and hit the wall backwards. 

On medium tyres, the track proved to simply be too wet for the driver as his Milton Keynes machine slipped on the painted white lines. 

Lawson has struggled so far this weekend, qualifying in P18. 15 places behind his team-mate Max Verstappen. 

“We expected the start of quali’ to be tough,” the Kiwi said. “To be honest, the first laps were expected to be off, and then we were just planning on building through the session. But obviously going off on that second lap put everything out of order a bit.

“And then [the] last lap was good, honestly, just until the last sector where I had a big drop so yeah missing P3 obviously doesn’t help any of this, but I shouldn’t be going off in Quali.”

Speaking to the media, including Motorsport.com, Lawson commented:

“[I was] hoping for a majority wet race. It basically dried up more than we thought and we struggled a lot with the fronts in the first stint, just overheating and then towards the end it dried up, we went to the slick. Honestly, the pace on the slick was okay for those few laps, but in the end it started raining more than we thought.

“We thought initially that it was just going to be sector 3 and that we could survive half the track, but it just rained everywhere and then I couldn’t keep it on track.”

When asked if he was on the same page as the Red Bull team regarding when to pit, Lawson added:

“No, we’re on the same page, but we wanted to take a risk. We shared that gamble together, but, I mean, I just apologise for putting the car in the wall.”

“Not much [in the way of positives from the weekend]. I’m just looking forward to going to China and resetting.

“I’ve been through this plenty of times before in my career, and fortunately we have just a few days off. Obviously China is a sprint weekend, so it’s gonna be tough in itself, but I’m just excited to go into another weekend.”

Photos from Australian GP – Race