Having been thrown into the deep end on his debut in the chaotic
Dutch Grand Prix, Liam Lawson followed up with a decent, if
under-the-radar 11th at Monza. The Daniel Ricciardo stand-in had
done what was expected of him, but on his first visit to the
Singapore GP, Lawson announced himself – and bloodied the nose of
Max Verstappen in the process. The Singapore GP was round 15 of 22
in the season, which up until this point, had been Verstappen's
personal plaything. He had won 12 of the previous 14 races, and had
not been defeated in a grand prix or Sprint in five months – since
Sergio Perez won the Azerbaijan GP. For Lawson, usually, his
AlphaTauri machine was not expected to be a challenger to
Verstappen's all-conquering machine – but things did not go
according to plan. Lawson stuns Verstappen As practice and the
early stages of qualifying developed, it became clear that Red
Bull's RB19 was badly out of sorts at Marina Bay, its balance and
operating window just not getting on with the track. Whilst Perez
was comfortably out in Q2 in 13th place, Verstappen found himself
on the bubble for a Q3 place, with Lawson on a flying lap. The New
Zealander's 1:32.166 was 0.007s faster than Verstappen's best time,
and consigned the Dutchman to 11th – his lowest place of the year
on pure pace in qualifying, his 15th in Saudi Arabia being due to a
car failure. Lawson found himself as the lead Red Bull-family
driver on the grid, eventually going onto take 10th in Q3, with a
time actually slower than the one which had knocked Verstappen
out. Despite starting 11th, Verstappen was still not ruled out of
contention for the win, but he could only climb up to fifth – the
only race of the year he did not finish on the podium – or out of
the final 18 he did not win. Perez also passed Lawson, but the
AlphaTauri driver banked ninth place to score his first F1 points
and make a statement. As for Red Bull, it lost its chance to
become the first team to win every grand prix in a single season,
matching McLaren's 1988 record of falling one short with 21 out of
22 wins after Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost took 15 from 16.
Dutch Grand Prix, Liam Lawson followed up with a decent, if
under-the-radar 11th at Monza. The Daniel Ricciardo stand-in had
done what was expected of him, but on his first visit to the
Singapore GP, Lawson announced himself – and bloodied the nose of
Max Verstappen in the process. The Singapore GP was round 15 of 22
in the season, which up until this point, had been Verstappen's
personal plaything. He had won 12 of the previous 14 races, and had
not been defeated in a grand prix or Sprint in five months – since
Sergio Perez won the Azerbaijan GP. For Lawson, usually, his
AlphaTauri machine was not expected to be a challenger to
Verstappen's all-conquering machine – but things did not go
according to plan. Lawson stuns Verstappen As practice and the
early stages of qualifying developed, it became clear that Red
Bull's RB19 was badly out of sorts at Marina Bay, its balance and
operating window just not getting on with the track. Whilst Perez
was comfortably out in Q2 in 13th place, Verstappen found himself
on the bubble for a Q3 place, with Lawson on a flying lap. The New
Zealander's 1:32.166 was 0.007s faster than Verstappen's best time,
and consigned the Dutchman to 11th – his lowest place of the year
on pure pace in qualifying, his 15th in Saudi Arabia being due to a
car failure. Lawson found himself as the lead Red Bull-family
driver on the grid, eventually going onto take 10th in Q3, with a
time actually slower than the one which had knocked Verstappen
out. Despite starting 11th, Verstappen was still not ruled out of
contention for the win, but he could only climb up to fifth – the
only race of the year he did not finish on the podium – or out of
the final 18 he did not win. Perez also passed Lawson, but the
AlphaTauri driver banked ninth place to score his first F1 points
and make a statement. As for Red Bull, it lost its chance to
become the first team to win every grand prix in a single season,
matching McLaren's 1988 record of falling one short with 21 out of
22 wins after Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost took 15 from 16.
The post Liam Lawson stuns Max Verstappen as Red Bull derailed in 'impossible' F1 challenge appeared first on RacingNews365.