Liam Lawson has put in an improved effort in qualifying for Formula One’s Miami Grand Prix, and will start Monday’s race 12th on the grid.
While luck didn’t go the Kiwi’s way in sprint qualifying 24 hours earlier, Lawson did put in a better showing on Sunday morning (NZT), and was 0.429s away from a top 10 start.
Lawson comfortably outqualified Racing Bulls teammate Arvid Lindblad, who’ll start 17th after being eliminated in the first stage of qualifying (Q1).
What’s more, Lawson could also be upgraded before lights out, after qualifying one place behind Nico Hulkenberg, whose Audi team have had reliability problems all weekend, even seeing teammate Gabriel Bortoleto unable to qualify at all.
“Honestly, that’s pretty much everything we had,” Lawson said post-qualifying. “We made a small improvement, but I guess everyone else did.
“I think it’s a bit too much of a step to catch the guys in the top 10. They’re a bit quicker than us, but we had good race pace this morning.
“If everyone finishes, and everything stays normal, it’ll be quite tough, but we never know.”
World championship leader Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes claimed pole position for the third grand prix in a row, potentially setting up an awkward moment, given the 19-year-old will be too young to drink the champagne he’d be sprayed in if he turns it into another victory.
Antonelli’s best time of 1m 27.798s was 0.166s clear of second place, four-time world champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third, 0.345s behind the Mercedes.
Reigning world champion Lando Norris was 0.385s off the pace in fourth, despite McLaren showing improvement by winning the sprint race earlier in the day.
Starting 12th is also an improvement on Lawson’s efforts in Miami from one year earlier, where he qualified 15th and was forced to retire after a first-lap collision with then-Alpine driver Jack Doohan.
Also potentially in the Kiwi’s favour is heavy rain forecast for Miami, giving Lawson the potential to show his wares in the wet. Last year, rain fell during the Miami sprint race, where Lawson went from 14th to cross the line seventh, only to be stripped of the result for a collision with Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
However, Lawson will also be sweating on power issues, which returned to haunt him in Sunday morning’s sprint race, where he finished 14th.
The Miami Grand Prix begins at 8am on Monday.
After the stewards went against him a day earlier, missing Alex Albon’s track limits infringement, Lawson needed no help to escape from Q1 this time around.
While he was forced to abort his first timed lap, Lawson’s opening effort of 1m 29.909s was enough to put him inside the top 10, and would have also seen him through to Q2. What’s more, Lawson’s opening effort was comfortably better than his best time in sprint qualifying on Saturday, 1m 31.043s.
With 0.384s up his sleeve, Lawson didn’t waste the chance to improve, and bettered his time to 1m 29.595s to be 11th in the first session, and got into Q2 with 0.325s to spare ahead of his teammate, who was eliminated by 0.213s.
Into Q2, and Lawson improved his time once more to post 1m 29.583s. However, once all 16 drivers had put in their first Q2 lap, Lawson had fallen to 11th, and missed a place in Q3.
Earlier, Lawson’s result in the sprint race was upgraded one place from 15th to 14th, after Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto was disqualified for an engine technical infringement.
Having started 15th, Lawson was plagued by engine issues and complained to his race engineer about a loss of power.
Lindblad was unable to start after a fault was found with his car.
McLaren claimed their first one-two finish of the season, as Norris took the chequered flag, with teammate Oscar Piastri in tow.
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.