Lawson reckons Red Bull missed an opportunity in the Dutch GP Sprint Qualifying

Lawson, who has been promoted to Red Bull from Racing Bulls following a hand injury to Isack Hadjar, failed to make it through to SQ3 while his teammate Max Verstappen also ended up a long way back in P6. The four-time world champion noted that it had been a difficult Friday. Normally, Red Bull Racing finds time over the course of a qualifying session, but that didn’t seem to be the case this time. "Yeah, to be honest I don’t really know," Lawson began to F1TV when asked as to what went wrong with his session. "It was certainly an interesting day, but normally you keep improving as qualifying goes on."

According to the New Zealander, it looked fairly promising at the start. "We started SQ1 quite strong, but after that we didn’t make the same step as everyone else," he added. "We’re obviously going to look into that. There’s a lot to learn today. But honestly, I’ve felt pretty good in the car so far. During qualifying it actually felt fine and I thought we’d go through. So it’s a shame."

The 24-year-old got the call on Monday confirming that he was filing in for Hadjar and then had to jump straight into the simulator. Because of the sprint format, he had only one practice session to prepare for sprint qualifying. "We’re of course going to try to fix it and get everything in order for [Grand Prix] qualifying," Lawson continued.

"But we absolutely had the potential to fight right at the front today. So that’s frustrating," he admitted.

It wasn’t just a somewhat odd Friday for Lawson and Verstappen—Lewis Hamilton also felt he couldn’t extract the maximum from the car. While Verstappen pointed to grip and balance as areas for improvement, Hamilton mostly wondered what was going on with his car. According to him, everything suddenly felt very different after they had looked good in VT1. Charles Leclerc said he drove one of his best laps to take P3.

"It felt good. We made a few small adjustments to the car, but when we started qualifying it was a completely different car," said the seven time world champion. "Of course you try to gain a few spots and put on a bit of a show. We’re going to look at the data and make a decision based on that [on what to change on the car]."

Red Bull had arrived at Zandvoort on a high after confirming Verstappen’s contract extension through 2030, but early pace exposed a clear deficit. Verstappen was more than half a second off George Russell while long-run data from FP1 was similarly discouraging, leaving Red Bull chasing grip and balance as rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren set the benchmark. Read more