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Liam Lawson feels he had ‘experience of every situation’ on an F1 debut to remember for a variety of reasons.
New Zealander Lawson was thrown in at the deep end, only learning during Friday’s drivers’ briefing for the Dutch Grand Prix that he would replace Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri after the Australian broke a hand in a Friday practice crash.
The 22-year-old’s first practice session on Saturday morning was run in the wet, with further wet conditions prevailing during his time in qualifying which saw him only run in Q1 after setting the slowest time.
Just as the race started at Zandvoort, rain again began to fall, sparking a flurry of pit stops at the end of the opening lap.
Lawson, however, incurred arguably the fastest penalty handed to a rookie as in double-stacking behind team-mate Yuki Tsunoda for intermediate tyres, he impeded Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, leading to a 10-second sanction from the stewards.
Creditably, after battling with the damaged Ferrari of Charles Leclerc at one stage during the race, Lawson managed to finish 13th, ahead of Tsunoda who collected a five-second penalty for causing a collision.
Reflecting on his maiden outing, Lawson said: “It was a little bit sketchy.
“The conditions were obviously all over the place. Rolling up to the grid it started raining, which definitely wasn’t the best feeling.
“But throughout the race, I was obviously learning huge amounts. The first part wasn’t the best. We lost a lot of time with the stacking in the pit stop, and then the penalty. That’s all part of it, obviously.
“But the second half, I started to get a bit of feeling on the softs in clean air, and then on the inters as well, I felt a lot more comfortable (than on Saturday), that’s for sure.”
Asked by Speedcafe whether he was proud to at least have brought his car home given the circumstances, he replied: “Yeah.
“You always look back and reflect, and there are things I definitely would have liked to have done better, but I’m reasonably satisfied with that.”
The scrap with Leclerc was what he described as “quite eventful”, although a mismatch in some respects as the Ferrari driver lost 60 points of downforce from his SF-23 following a lap-one skirmish with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.
Nevertheless, it was something to savour for Lawson in what was overall a quite remarkable day.
“I think he (Leclerc) was struggling a lot on the softs but every time I passed him he just passed me back down the straight, so it was a little bit frustrating, but obviously it’s good to get experience,” said Lawson.
“I feel like I had experience of every situation in that race, with multiple pitstops, wheel-to-wheel racing, rain, dry, so it was a good learning experience.”
Lawson will again be in the AT04 for next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix as it has been confirmed Ricciardo will miss the race after undergoing surgery on Sunday morning to repair his broken hand.
