Liam Lawson’s first official F1 session aboard the RB21 in Bahrain is now complete, and it was a promising debut with the team for the young Kiwi.
Strong pace marked his morning session, where he completed 58 laps in the opening four-hour stint. He even briefly topped the timesheets.
The session wasn’t without incident, however. With just under an hour remaining, a spin at Turn 3 saw him skillfully avoid the gravel. Fortunately, only flat-spotted tyres resulted from the incident.
Despite this, he finished the morning session second-fastest, just 0.132 seconds behind Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli.
His teammate Max Verstappen would take over for the afternoon session. With the reigning four-time World Champion finishing the day third fastest, nine-tenths of a second ahead of Lawson’s morning time.
Ultimately, Lawson finished the day eighth overall. The afternoon session saw the six fastest times of the day, with McLaren’s Lando Norris topping the timesheets with a 1:30.430 on the Hard Tyre, just over a tenth of a second ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell, and Max Verstappen completing the top three.
Other notable performances for the day were Carlos Sainz Jr finishing fifth in his first day with Williams, and seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton finishing down in 13th in his debut with Ferrari.
Day Two of testing begins at 8 pm tonight, with Lawson behind the wheel of the RB21 for the entire day, before Verstappen concludes the test for Red Bull on Day Three.
Tune in live on the Formula One app to follow his progress in Bahrain.
Header Image: Oracle Red Bull Racing Facebook
