The Racing Bulls driver enjoyed a productive Friday across both practice sessions, finishing eighth in FP1 before setting a 1m31.590s lap in FP2 to place 12th as teams worked through setup changes ahead of qualifying.
The New Zealander said the balance of the car improved significantly as the team experimented with changes between the two sessions.
“It’s great to be back in Suzuka and I’ve had a really enjoyable day, he said.
“Things feel quite different from last year with these new cars.
“We made some changes between FP1 and FP2 as we were struggling with the car at high speed, but we managed to improve the balance and learned a lot in the process.”
After scoring points in both the sprint and the grand prix in China two weeks ago, Lawson said he believed Racing Bulls is well positioned to fight in another tightly packed midfield battle.
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“We’re now in a good position to get the car into an optimal window ahead of qualifying tomorrow,” he added.
“It’s going to be close, so everything is still to play for.”
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Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane agreed that the margins were extremely fine among the midfield runners, suggesting even a small improvement could shift the team several positions up the order.
“Performance wise, we’re right in the thick of the midfield battle,” Permane said.
“A tenth either way could put us top or bottom of the midfield, so it’s super tight, but this makes for an exciting Qualifying tomorrow.”
While Lawson completed a full program, the day proved far more frustrating for teammate Arvid Lindblad.
The rookie’s running in FP2 ended almost immediately after an internal gearbox failure on his out lap, leaving him without a representative lap time from the session.
Permane said the team had already identified the issue and planned to install a fresh gearbox ahead of Saturday’s running.
“We had an internal gear box failure on Arvid’s car on the out lap of FP2,” he explained.
“We understand what happened, but we will put a fresh gear box on ready for tomorrow.“
Running time is obviously important here, so huge apologies to Arvid.”
Lindblad described the setback as unfortunate but pointed to Lawson’s improvements with the setup as an encouraging sign for the rest of the weekend.
“It was a bit of an unfortunate day today,” Lindblad said.
“Both Liam and I started with a similar setup in FP1, but we found the same limitations with the car, so we decided to go in a similar direction to try and improve – he was happier, so that’s promising for tomorrow.”
With the midfield expected to remain tightly packed heading into qualifying, Lawson will be hoping the progress made on Friday can translate into another opportunity to fight for points on Sunday.
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