Liam Lawson says his chances of progressing into the second part of Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying were \u201ccompletely screwed\u201d by a DRS issue.<\/p>\n
Lawson <\/a>had set a strong banker lap in Q1 but was unable to go any faster after the DRS on his VCARB 02 closed halfway down the back straight, severely compromising his straightline performance.<\/p>\n The problem left him a distant 17th on the grid, while his teammate Isack Hadjar<\/a> showed the potential of Racing Bulls<\/a> in Bahrain by qualifying 12th.<\/p>\n Having set the 12th-quickest time himself in similar conditions in FP2, Lawson was frustrated to be knocked out of Q1 for the third time in four race weekends this season.<\/p>\n “I don’t know why it closed, obviously if it was something I did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ll learn from it, definitely because that’s completely screwed us today. But as to why it did, I don’t know. It’s such a shame.”<\/p>\n Speaking to Formula1.com, he added: \u201cQ1 was alright uptil that point. I don’t know what really happened.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I had wheelspin out of the corner and opened the DRS, and it closed again basically. Pretty frustrating obviously. Just sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n The DRS is designed to shut automatically whenever a driver lifts off the throttle or hits the brake pedal. It can also be manually closed with a button on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n Racing Bull\u2019s technical director Tim Goss explained why Lawson\u2019s DRS didn\u2019t remain active until the end of the straight.<\/p>\n “In the tricky conditions Liam picked up a little wheelspin on exit from Turn 10, resulting in a small throttle lift to keep the car under control causing DRS to automatically close, which caused him to lose vital speed on the straight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Despite his poor starting position, Lawson is optimistic about his chances on Sunday, having felt his car has been competitive in practice in the build-up to qualifying.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s been quite quick,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been quick this weekend in most of the practice sessions, I would say.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us it was just putting it together in quali and tuning it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we had the car in a pretty good window and the speed was there, it\u2019s just a shame for the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor tomorrow, it’s obviously positive, with the speed we have we should move forward, it’s just how far we could move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson says his chances of progressing into the second part of Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying were \u201ccompletely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,228,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-16070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-liam-lawson","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114329813226378116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}