It was a point-less weekend for Racing Bulls, with both Lawson and Tsunoda ending the Qatar GP out of the top ten.
Liam Lawson was involved in an early incident with Valtteri Bottas, earning himself a ten second time penalty which severely affected the rest of his Sunday.
He spun at turn 1, making contact with the Finn driver as well at the restart following the Safety Car issued for the accident involving Colapinto, Ocon and Hülkenberg.
Early accident
The Racing Bulls driver went into details on the matter after the Qatar GP, describing the dynamics of the accident and taking all the blame for it.
“It was just my bad, I thought we had really good temperature to be honest. I worked a lot the tyres on the restart, on the safety car, went for a move and halfway around the corner realised I wasn’t, basically I was sliding up the track towards him [Bottas] ,and at that point I just tried to get out of it honestly because I was about to hit him.
“So I tried to check up and spun the car, I don’t know if we touched, I guess we did but yeah, that was on me. It was my fault, I didn’t expect him to stay out there, and because he did I was sliding up the track, but it was my fault,” he concluded.
Soft tyre gamble fails
Following the mistake, Racing Bulls decided to put him on a different strategy by switching to soft tyres in order to try and give him a shot at points towards the end of the Qatar GP.
However it didn’t pay off as they wore out. RB had the slowest race car in Lusail.
“Yeah, we weren’t going to score points from where we were so we tried something, softs obviously didn’t work, we had a small issue as well that we were managing at the end.
“It’s just been a tough day but honestly I put ourselves in that position when I spun the car.”
2025
Lawson’s contract keeps him in the Red Bull-adjacent team up until the next Abu Dhabi round.
Asked on whether the tough Qatar round might affect his chances to secure a full-time seat for the upcoming 2025 season, the former Carlin F2 driver denied, bringing up the positive takeaways of the weekend as well.
“Honestly nothing’s really changed from where I sit. We had some positives this weekend, sprint quali was strong for us. Obviously yesterday we struggled more in quali, but after the spin we had ok pace.
“So yeah, there’s points to take away from it but overall we didn’t have the package this weekend to fight against the teams we need to fight against,” he summed up, bringing up the tough battle with Alpine and Haas for P6 in the Constructors’ Championship.
The American-owned team is eight points ahead, with the Enstone-based squad even further clear, having a gap of thirteen points to Racing Bulls.
Tough for both
On the other side of the garage, Yuki Tsunoda’s Qatar race for Racing Bulls was not one to write home about as well.
The Japanese driver had a superb start, gaining 4 spots. However, he was swallowed up by Magnussen, Gasly, Alonso and the Saubers in the first stint as they had no pace.
“Yeah, I had a good start as well, in lap one I was pulling P9 and able to overtake Alonso as well after safety car, but just, I mean, I never had that much of a bad pace.
“I just gave it everything, I was not even managing the tyres, but even with this…” said the 24-year-old after the race.
“Qatar, normally it’s hard to overtake for the car behind and it seems like a lot of cars had a quite easy job of overtaking me.
“So just generally, lack of pace and it’s not even small.”
Tsunoda expanded on the nature of the issue which marred his Qatar GP, mentioning that it wasn’t an aerodynamic kind of issue which caused their struggles, citing the difficulties the car has at circuits like this.
“Just feels like pure performance, downforce level is not too far away.
“I mean, we have to revise it, but at least in the car, it’s quite on the ballpark and at least in the straight line speed normally we are quite low, this time medium to low which is kind of good position as we expected.
“But it’s just generally lack of pace in every corner and every straight,” he summed up.
A Qatar issue
Asked if it might be a track specific issue, which would allow for a better performance and car feeling in the next round in Abu Dhabi, Tsunoda acknowledged the possibility thinking back on last season’s pace, but also admitted that the average Racing Bulls pace as of lately hasn’t been much better:
“A little bit, I would say that as well. Last year we didn’t perform here at all, but also last year was probably better than this year, so, maybe car characteristics.
“The efficiency of the car is the main target that we are lacking throughout the year, and we are trying to improve, but especially like this kind of track in Qatar, long corners, high speed, medium speed, long straight, it requires quite a lot of efficiency of the car.
“We normally struggle quite a lot, so maybe we have to revise it to be honest, but I don’t think there’s much in the car, at least what I’m feeling,” he concluded.
