The Racing Bulls of Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson had a tough race at the Bahrain GP, failing to capitalize on the pace the car showed early in the weekend. From poor starts off the line to tricky battles at the back of the field, the team struggled to piece everything together.
Lawson on the potential of the car at the Bahrain GP
Lawson began the weekend with a decent Friday, logging P8 and P12 in FP1 and FP2. The Kiwi driver had a trickier Saturday, finishing P13 in FP3 and qualifying 17th on the grid.
When talking to print media, Lawson stated that the biggest disappointment was failing to get the most out of the car in the race on Sunday. The driver faced an issue in qualifying causing him to start from P17.
“Yeah, to be honest, the biggest shame is that the car was fast all weekend. The car was fast in quali, the car was fast in the race, especially the last ten on the soft. We’re just coming from so far back, so yeah, it’s a shame.”
“The speed’s been there all weekend. We had a DRS issue in quali, just a tough race coming through.”
His poor qualifying outing was a big point of frustration for the Racing Bulls driver. He told the media that he got “stuck” behind drivers at the bottom of the order.
“From where we were starting it was going to be hard, but we just got stuck the whole race.”
“Today, there was some overtaking; it wasn’t as easy as people expected, maybe as we expected as well.”
Lawson accrued a combined 15 seconds of penalties from incidents involving Nico Hulkenberg and Lance Stroll during the Bahrain GP. Lawson claimed that the only way he could attempt to overtake was by making huge late-braking lunges, defending the collisions he caused with Stroll and Hulkenberg.
“I felt like the only way I could overtake was having to lunge from quite far back. I need to review the incidents, I don’t really remember too much about them. It’s a shame, but we weren’t on for points anyway.”
Hadjar on both of the Racing Bulls’s poor starts
Hadjar had a very good weekend going into the race, finishing FP2 in P6, and FP3 in P7. Qualifying P12 on Saturday, Hadjar looked to be fighting for the points until major wheelspin lost him multiple positions in the opening two corners.
Hadjar told the print media post-race that the Racing Bulls car struggled with practice starts all weekend. This did not instill any confidence in the driver for the start of Sunday’s race.
“Since the start of the weekend, our starts have been quite poor and I was not really confident at the race start. I had wheelspin forever and lost 2 positions before Turn 1 and then lost 2 more fighting like hell. So, yeah, it got us in the wrong momentum.”
The Franco-Algerian driver attributed this issue to Bahrain International Circuit’s specific surface.
“it’s definitely tarmac-specific. It’s much, much slower than the previous tracks, but still we should be able to adapt, every team does it, and yeah, we need to do a better job.”
Other than the poor start, the team made the right call to bring Hadjar into the pits to try to pull off the undercut. However, Hadjar ultimately failed to recover from the poor start.
“I think it was the right strategy, but when you’re so far back, it doesn’t bring points, that’s for sure. But I think that if we nailed the start, we kept our position with how aggressive we were on the undercuts, it could have paid off.”
The Racing Bulls team enter the Saudi Arabian GP this coming weekend. Currently sitting 8th in the constructors’ championship, they are hoping to fight for points in Jeddah.
