The Racing Bulls driver will start Sunday’s race from ninth, his equal-second best result of 2025 and just his third Q3 appearance of the year. But the Kiwi felt a small error cost him a shot at something even better.

“Honestly, yeah. I think the car was in the best place it’s been,” Lawson told Sky Sports F1.

“Just tiny mistakes, well, one small mistake to be honest, that cost a bit of lap time.

“When the margin for P5 is a tenth and a half away or whatever it is, so it’s frustrating.

“I do feel like we missed out on today. Obviously tomorrow’s the important day to perform.”

It marked just his third Q3 appearance of the season, with points scored on both previous occasions.

He’ll also be looking to bounce back from his last outing at Silverstone, where he was taken out on the opening lap and left to rue a more cautious approach.

“If I look back to a couple of weeks ago, I was almost too cautious,” he said. “I knew we were going to have a quick race car and it ended up wiping me out. So tomorrow we’ll just try and make the best out of it.”

Rain is expected to play a role in Sunday’s race, with the challenge of Eau Rouge in the wet front of mind for Lawson.

“I think everyone has probably taken that into consideration today and maybe compromised a bit,” he said. “At the end of the day, it will be what it’ll be.

“I think for me I’m not going to stress about whether it rains or not and just try and drive as fast as I can tomorrow.

“Eau Rouge is going to be quick in the wet. So if it does start wet, it’s going to rain tomorrow, if it is at the start, but yeah, let’s see.”

The strong qualifying effort comes in Alan Permane’s first weekend in charge as Racing Bulls team principal.

Permane, who stepped in following Laurent Mekies’ promotion to Red Bull after Christian Horner’s shock dismissal, was pleased with how the team rebounded after a frustrating sprint Friday.

“It was very good,” Permane said. “We were a bit fed up yesterday actually. Even though we qualified in the sprint reasonably well, we felt we had more potential than that. So we spent a lot of time looking at what we could’ve done better… and it paid off today.”

Permane noted that both drivers benefitted from balance tweaks heading into Saturday, but said the team stuck with the same core setup despite the threat of rain.

“We didn’t change the downforce levels or anything,” he explained. “So we just tweaked the balance to what the guys had in sprint qualifying and then of course we had 14 laps this morning to really feel the car.”

Lawson will start the race one spot behind teammate Isack Hadjar, who qualified in eighth.

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