After qualifying tenth, Liam Lawson secured his maiden points finish in Formula 1 at the Singapore Grand Prix by finishing ninth in a thrilling race. With this result, Lawson becomes the sixth New Zealander to have scored points in Formula 1.
Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
The New Zealander’s result is the highest that an AlphaTauri driver managed to achieve all season; his performance has been stellar since he took over Daniel Ricciardo’s car, delivering strong results that have impressed many in the paddock.
When asked about his Singapore performance, he expressed that he’s been pushing to maximise every race, saying: “I’m just trying to maximise every race, every session, and finish as high as we can.
“Today that was points, which is great. We’ll try and do even more, hopefully in the future if I get the chance to drive again.”
At the start, Lawson lost a couple of spots and dropped down to twelfth, making his fight to secure a points finish much harder than expected, considering how difficult it is to pass. When asked about his race start, he explained how he’s working on mastering the launch, adding:
“For me, the starts I need to get on top of because it’s now two weekends in a row that I’ve watched the start, basically, and lost a couple of positions.
“It’s just making our life more difficult, so that’s really the biggest loss of the race, and that’s on my part.”
Nonetheless, Lawson dug in and took advantage of unreliability and crashes in front of him to grab a couple of points in the toughest Grand Prix of the year, in spite of lacking the pace they wanted in race trim.
“For the rest, I think we extracted everything out of the car.
“We didn’t quite have the race pace, to be honest; we kind of felt going into the race it was going to be a little bit difficult because we felt this on Friday as well, but we tried to correct it as much as we could, so I think we maximised.”
After the safety car, Lawson had to defend from multiple faster cars which led him to fluctuate between eighth and tenth position. However, the incident between Albon and Perez, as well as Russell’s crash, secured his points finish. He expressed how he felt at that stage of the race: “I think when maybe 20 laps to go before Max [Verstappen] and the Red Bulls were coming back.
“At that point, I thought we had a chance, then I felt like it was slipping away again.
“I guess when Checo [Sergio Perez] and [Alex] Albon had their fight, and Albon went back, that was when I felt a bit more, I guess, comfortable that like we could at least score P10.
“Obviously, it was a bonus – I mean, not a bonus to see somebody crash out for George, but for us obviously, it means we get an extra point.”
