Racing Bulls had mixed performances on Saturday (4) in the qualifying session for the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix. While Isack Hadjar advanced to Q3 and secured eighth place on the grid, Liam Lawson did not make it past 14th place, but with Williams’ disqualification, he will start from 12th position.
Hadjar showed consistency throughout the weekend, but acknowledged that a mistake cost him an even better result.
“It was frustrating today. It’s good that we made it to Q3 again, but at the same time, we wasted the potential that was there. It was also the first time we made it to Q3 while saving two new sets of soft tires. I was pushing hard on my last lap of qualifying and felt like it was going to be a special lap, but unfortunately, I made a mistake on turn 8, so I can only be annoyed with myself, since the car worked very well,” he stated.
“Thinking about tomorrow, we’ll start from P8, which unfortunately is on the dirty side of the grid. There are very fast cars ahead of us, and overtaking is quite difficult on this track, but we’ll do our best to fight and bring some points home,” he concluded.
On the other side of the garage, Liam Lawson faced difficulties in the third free practice, finishing only 20th, but managed to recover in qualifying. Still, 14th place was the maximum possible.
“The team did an incredible job to get the car ready on time for qualifying, I couldn’t thank them enough. I made things very difficult for myself by losing laps in two practice sessions, but during qualifying, things seemed to be going well. I was slower with the new tire than with the used one at the end, so it’s something we’ll need to analyze. It will be very difficult to overtake tomorrow, so I’ll keep working hard to put everything together in the race,” he said.
The team’s technical director, Tim Goss, valued the overall performance and highlighted the evolution of the team: “An excellent qualifying session for the team under the lights of Singapore today. The car worked well from the start of the event, and our engineers worked consistently on that basis to adapt the car’s balance as the track gained grip, and to understand how to extract the most from the soft tire on the first fast lap of qualifying. The mechanics did a fantastic job rebuilding Liam’s car on time for the start of the session.”
For Goss, the results of Hadjar and Lawson reflect both the team’s competitiveness and the challenges of the weekend: “Although Liam went through Q1 reasonably smoothly, the lack of track time in practice put him at a slight disadvantage in the more competitive Q2, and he qualified 14th. Isack achieved our first goal of the weekend and qualified eighth, ahead of all our main competitors in the Constructors’ Championship. It was a very balanced session, and if he had managed the perfect lap, we believe he could have qualified ahead of the Ferraris. That ambition is a measure of how far our car and drivers have progressed, and it gives us a lot of confidence for tomorrow’s race.”
