Austria P6 pivotal in ‘incredibly tough year’ for Lawson

Liam Lawson believes his career-best sixth place in the Austrian Grand Prix could prove pivotal to his hopes of having a strong season with Racing Bulls.

The New Zealander opened the year at Red Bull but was demoted after just two races, and had only scored points in Monaco since returning to Racing Bulls in April. With teammate Isack Hadjar impressing, Lawson was coming under increasing scrutiny and admits his high confidence levels were proving tough to maintain amid a lack of results before his strong return on Sunday.

“For sure in the back of your mind,” Lawson told SiriusXM. “For me this year, I felt really confident and comfortable, but you know the result’s not there, and to have one come through is very, very cool.

“We’re all mentally strong, we all work very had on our mindset, but no matter what, sometimes when it’s a tough year like this, a result like this makes the difference, so I’m very happy.”

Lawson separately stated that he felt different aspects had not all aligned for him during certain race weekends when had shown strong pace earlier this season, and is aware he needs to capitalize on a more regular basis.

“It’s been an incredibly tough year. A very tough year with a lot of potential. I came into F1 and even last year had a few races and most of them converted very well, and sometimes you can have all the confidence and speed in the world and they don’t [convert], and it felt like that this year. So to finally have a result is amazing but we need to obviously keep doing this as well.

“The last couple of weekends I think in Canada we had really good speed in practice, Barcelona had good speed in practice, Monaco as well and the result didn’t convert.

“We’ve been pushing a lot with the car and especially our side of the garage they’ve been doing a lot of work to make me comfortable and we made some changes this weekend and they’ve worked really well.

“We need to obviously keep pushing but it’s sometimes like that in F1, sometimes the speed and everything can be there but there’s a lot of variables in this sport and they’ve worked for us this weekend.”