Lawson impressed early with strong pace in Q1, comfortably progressing while teammate Isack Hadjar topped the opening segment.
But his fortunes turned in Q2, as a balance issue and an early error left him unable to recover on his final runs.
“The car was fast today and we had a strong Q1,” Lawson said.
“In Q2, I struggled with the balance and a mistake on the first lap made the rest of the session quite tricky.
“The second lap wasn’t very strong, so the team decided to abort and use a used tyre at the end.
“We ended up even slower, so it’s something we’ll be reviewing.
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“It will be tough given where we’re starting from tomorrow, but we’ll be working hard as a team to push for points.”
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The result marked Lawson’s third consecutive Q2 exit and his lowest starting position since Silverstone, a disappointing outcome on a day where the car appeared to have the pace to challenge for the top ten.
Racing Bulls head of vehicle performance Guillaume Dezoteux explained that while overnight setup changes had helped improve the car, Lawson’s Q2 error proved costly.
“After a difficult Friday, we made several changes on the car setup from data analysis and simulator running, which have seemed to have worked well,” Dezoteux said.
“Q1 was intense with the entire field within less than one second of lap time.
“We decided to offset ourselves to avoid traffic, and it appeared to pay off.
“The same approach in Q2 was riskier as we were missing the last bits of track evolution, but Isack managed to get through.
“Unfortunately, Liam made a mistake in T4 of his first Q2 attempt; in his second lap he wasn’t improving so we decided to abort and try again, but his tyres were already dropping in performance.”
Hadjar ultimately advanced to Q3 and qualified ninth, continuing a strong weekend for the French rookie.
“I’m very happy about my team and the way we bounced back from yesterday,” Hadjar said.
“We worked really hard overnight, making some changes to the car and we went in the right direction.
“It definitely paid off as it helped us get into Q3 today.”
With both cars showing flashes of pace, Dezoteux believes there is still opportunity for progress on Sunday, particularly with the long run down to Turn 1 offering overtaking chances.
“The race strategy looks quite defined with most of the cars on the same tyre allocation,” he said.
“The race start is critical here with the long run down to T1, so we will push on both drivers to train their launch procedure in the morning.”
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