Liam Lawson has held onto fourth in the FIA Formula 2 championship after a tough weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain, while fellow Kiwi Marcus Armstrong moved up in the points standings.
Lawson had an issue in qualifying that saw him start both of the weekend’s races from 16th.
“We had an issue with the warm-up of the tyres in qualifying, particularly on the second set that messed us up a bit,” said Lawson.
“We know what needs to be improved so it shouldn’t happen again.”
Marcus Armstrong has moved up in the championship now sitting fifth behind Lawson. Armstrong started the feature race from 13th but made the most of a late pit stop to pass a number of cars.
“Happy with our recovery in the last 10 laps and the points that came with it,” said Armstrong. “I wanted more but did what we could.”
Lawson had strong starts in both of the races but would get stuck in a train of cars.
“I was in a DRS train for most of it and couldn’t overtake anybody,” said Lawson at the end of the first race. “I had good tyres compared to the guys around me but still couldn’t do anything. It was pretty frustrating.”
The feature race which requires cars to complete a pit stop, saw Lawson make his stop early on in the race to switch to the harder tyres after starting on the softs.
Lawson had climbed to 6th late in the race before coming under pressure from drivers who had opted to stop later in the race, as the cars including Armstrong made the most of the fresh soft tyres Lawson dropped back to ninth by the end of the race.
“I think our strategy was okay but we didn’t optimise it. A really good first lap and then we obviously boxed a bit too early. I came out behind [Theo] Pourchaire and got stuck behind him the whole race. His pace was too slow which put us under pressure from the alternate strategy guys coming back at us,” he said.
“If we’d be able to clear Pourchaire I think we could have been okay.”
The ninth-place results in both races saw Lawson take two points at the end of the round, to hold onto fourth in the championship.
Felipe Drugovich took both of the race wins in Barcelona, passing Jack Doohan for the race lead after starting from 10th on the grid.
The FIA F2 championship will be on track next for testing in just four days’ time at Monte Carlo, as the field prepares for the Monaco Grand Prix meeting.
Main image: Liam Lawson social media