Despite suffering two separate mechanical related retirements during last weekend’s F3 round from Hungary, Liam Lawson has taken some positives moving forward, admitting everything else was beyond his control.
The 18-year-old was running fourth in race one after a sublime opening lap which had Lawson scythed his way through a Turn 1 melee to be within a shot of a podium finish only for his Hitech GP power-unit to let go in a burning inferno.
The resulting fiery dance of Lawson’s Dallara F3 was enough for officials to suspend the race for 30-minutes as the dressed the oil spill at Turn 1.
Compelled to start towards the back of the gird for a wet second race, Lawson had moved forward 13 positions before his car once again shut off at Turn 1 when his engine dropped onto three cylinders.
The subsequent DNF is Lawson’s third consecutive retirement. Though the Kiwi still sits eighth in the standings, 51-points adrift of provisional championship leader Oscar Piastri.
Nonetheless, the Red Bull junior remains upbeat about his potential as he re-centres his attention to the next round from Silverstone.
“What can I say, at the end of the day I can just be happy that I did everything that I could in both races and the technical problems are outside of my control,” said Lawson.
“Looking at the performance overall, I’m not happy with qualifying, we missed the boat there in the wet.
“We had good pace in the first run and then changed something for the second and it just didn’t go well at all. I could not turn the tyre on so I couldn’t improve my lap time even though the track was faster, so that was disappointing.
“We need to find out what’s happened because I’m not sure yet. They were looking into it but obviously very disappointing, they were two races where we could have got a lot of points. Even in the second race, coming from the back we could have got a good load of points.”
Lawson picked up his debut podium in the series at the British venue last year driving for the MP Motorsport outfit.
Now a proven race winner and championship contender, Lawson will need a strong pair of results to reignite the fight for the title.
The F3 paddock will have four races from Silverstone across the second doubleheader of the revised 2020 championship calendar, with the first pair of races set for August 1 and 2.
Main Image: Red Bull Media