Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson lost his shot at points right from the start of the Australian Grand Prix when he was slow off the line, dropping back into the pack as soon as the lights went out.
The Kiwi driver struggled to get going while Franco Colapinto had to take evasive action to avoid a crash. The rest of his race didn’t improve much from there.
Lawson did manage to outqualify rookie Arvid Lindblad, but it was Lindblad who looked stronger across the other sessions over the weekend.
He’s also faced some scrutiny over how quickly he’s adapting to this year’s cars. Even though he showed a bit more pace later on, he still finished five spots behind Lindblad in what turned out to be a frustrating afternoon.
An update had been added to his car before Melbourne, but it didn’t help with the “harvesting” issue that Lawson repeatedly flagged on team radio during the race.
Frustration grows as Liam Lawson grapples with persistent issues
Lawson spent much of the race voicing his concerns about energy management, saying early on: “I’m doing something wrong. I’m really aggressive harvesting at turn three, causing a lot of understeer.”
He later added: “I have really bad harvesting at turn 3. It’s a massive handbrake, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
His race engineer responded with a suggestion: “You can use push-toggle as a countermeasure now,” but Lawson replied: “I’m already using push-toggle.”
As the race went on, Lawson reported more issues, noting that he was losing grip and had no balance through the slower corners. “Low speed, I have no grip. Front left is going,” he said.
“I still have this weird balance, in low speed. Like, look at turn three.”
He also struggled when behind other cars and questioned why his battery management changed so much in those situations:
“Why can’t I have less energy when I’m following the car?” he asked over team radio.
“I have massive wheelspin again. Every time it’s trying to charge more. The car is really difficult to drive at low speeds.”
Liam Lawson says Australian Grand Prix race start let him down
After a challenging opening race of 2026, Lawson reflected in his official post-race debrief: “Honestly, the lights went out very quick, but I thought I nailed the reaction and the procedure, but I don’t know.
“Obviously, I’ll have to review it, but the car didn’t move, lost all power, and I couldn’t get power for another five seconds, so I was just sitting there. It’s pretty frustrating.”
Asked about the pace of the car, Lawson continued: “I think it was OK. We had some issues during the race.
“Every time I got to the back of a car, our energy management wasn’t really working properly, and I kept actually losing power.
“Obviously, a big learning curve for all of us today with these cars, but we just fought some issues during the race.
“I thought the pace of the car was actually quite OK.”
Lindblad beating his teammate on debut puts immediate pressure on Lawson even though Racing Bulls will be delighted to have already scored four points this season.
Guenther Steiner thinks Lawson has what it takes to lead Racing Bulls this season but will need an improved showing at next week’s Chinese Grand Prix where he famously was dropped by Red Bull 12 months ago.
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