A second crash in less than 24 hours has come back to haunt Liam Lawson, who will start 12th on the grid at Formula One’s Singapore Grand Prix.
The Kiwi driver had qualified with the 14th-fastest time, but was upgraded two places after the two Williams cars were both disqualified for failing technical checks.
Having seen his second free practice session (FP2) ended when he hit the wall at turn 17, Lawson made another mistake in the third session (FP3), when he crashed out at turn seven.
That left Lawson with just seven laps in FP3 and robbed him of vital time on track before qualifying.
And while Lawson drove admirably to advance out of the first stage of qualifying, he wasn’t able to advance from the second and missed out on the chance to push for a top-10 start by just 0.244s.
“Honestly, it’s on me today with where we’ve ended up,” Lawson said after qualifying.
“Missing practice, having two crashes is not good enough at all. I made it very difficult for myself.
“Through qualifying, it was looking okay. The last tyre, for whatever reason, we didn’t make it work.
“The car is fast, whether we can move forward and fight for points, I don’t know. It’s going to be tough to overtake, but let’s see.”
Lawson can at the very least take solace from the fact he outqualified Red Bull rival Yuki Tsunoda, who will now start 13th.
The two drivers are widely understood to both be competing for the same place at Racing Bulls on the 2026 grid, with Lawson’s teammate Isack Hadjar increasingly likely to be promoted into Red Bull’s senior ranks.
For the second time this season, and first since Canada, Mercedes’ George Russell claimed pole position with a best lap of 1m 29.158s, 0.182s clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who joins him on the front row.
Singapore is the only race on the Formula One calendar that Verstappen has not won.
On a weekend where McLaren can claim the constructors title, should they finish the weekend more than 303 points clear of second place, Oscar Piastri starts in third, while teammate Lando Norris qualified fifth.
Lawson’s Racing Bulls teammate Hadjar qualified in eighth place, 0.688s back from Russell’s mark.
For the second time in 24 hours, the Racing Bulls mechanics were able to repair Lawson’s car though, as the 23-year-old was able to make it to the start line.
Lawson’s first lap, 1m 31.425s, was initially good enough for fifth place in the early stage of Q1, albeit with 10 drivers still yet to have set a time.
By the time he returned for his second stint, Lawson had fallen to 12th, but soon plummeted into the drop zone in 16th, 0.164s shy of safety.
Lawson was able to improve to 1m 30.681s with his second effort and climbed into the top 10, 0.516s clear of elimination.
With less than two minutes left in the session, and the track continuing to improve, Lawson left the garage for his third attempt at a flying lap.
However, as Alpine’s Pierre Gasly hit the wall at turn 11 to trigger a yellow flag, Lawson’s last chance was scuppered, leaving the Kiwi in 12th, waiting nervously to see if he’d progressed.
Fortunately, drivers behind him weren’t able to better their times, as Lawson snuck into Q2 by 0.139s.
Looking to break into the top 10, Lawson bettered his Q1 time to post 1m 30.320s, albeit sitting 11th after the first set of laps, 0.042 shy of safety.
By the time Lawson left the garage for his final lap, that distance to progressing had become 0.084s, however the Kiwi was not able to better his time and was eliminated in 14th.
Lawson has raced the Singapore Grand Prix once previously, where he qualified 10th and finished ninth in 2023.
The Singapore Grand Prix begins at 1am on Monday (NZT).
Pit lane: Alex Albon (Williams), Carlos Sainz (Williams)
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.