Liam Lawson's Impressive Qualifying Performance in Spain
Liam Lawson’s final Red Bull audition in Spain began with a statement lap and ended with a hint of frustration – but also with another line on a CV that refuses to go away.
The New Zealander will start inside the top 10 for the Spanish Grand Prix, his second Q3 appearance in three outings for Red Bull, as the team weighs up whether he has a place in its long‑term plans beyond this brief cameo.
“We were very competitive through the first part of quali,” Lawson said afterwards. “Unfortunately it just fell away from us in Q3. Everybody else made quite a big step in Q3, and we just missed out. It’s a shame, I think we were very competitive today.”
Norris snatches pole, Antonelli breathes down his neck
At the sharp end, Lando Norris delivered when it mattered most. The McLaren driver, and reigning world champion, shook off a disrupted build‑up to qualifying to take pole with a lap of 1m 31.824s.
He edged world championship leader Kimi Antonelli by a razor-thin 0.011s, the kind of margin that underlines just how hard both pushed on their final runs. Norris had spent much of second practice stuck in the McLaren garage with a gearbox issue, yet when the grid formed up on Saturday evening, his name sat at the top.
Behind them, Lawson’s temporary teammate Max Verstappen will launch from third, 0.140s off Norris and 0.352s ahead of Lawson. The Red Bull pair lock in a powerful platform for the race, with Lawson again right in the mix on outright pace.
Arvid Lindblad kept his own solid run going, the fulltime Red Bull driver securing 10th and another Q3 appearance. Yuki Tsunoda, the man who took Lawson’s old Racing Bulls seat, could do no better than 15th.
The race gets underway at 1am Monday (NZT), with Lawson again starting from a position that offers both opportunity and risk.
Lawson lights up Q1
Qualifying began with a bang for the Kiwi.
One of the last drivers to set a time in Q1, Lawson punched in a 1m 33.316s that sent him straight to the top of the timesheets. When the first runs had shaken out – everyone except Haas rookie Ollie Bearman, sidelined after his final practice crash – Lawson sat a huge 3.728s clear of the drop zone.
He was effectively safe without needing to improve. He went quicker anyway.
A marginally faster 1m 33.310s on his second run underlined his comfort and carried him through as the third-fastest car in the session, a performance that will not have gone unnoticed on the Red Bull pit wall.
For the home crowd, though, Q1 turned sour. Both Spanish drivers, Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso, fell at the first hurdle, silencing a raucous grandstand that had arrived expecting at least one local hero in the fight for pole.
Calm progress in Q2, then the Q3 sting
Lawson kept his nerve in Q2. Again leaving it late, he opened with a 1m 32.874s that put him fourth and 0.924s clear of the elimination zone. There was never any real sense he might miss out.
He tightened it up again on his second attempt, dropping his time to 1m 32.780s. That lap eased him comfortably into Q3, marking his second appearance in the final segment in just three races with the senior team.
The final act did not quite bring the leap he wanted.
An opening Q3 run of 1m 32.633s left him eighth. He found more time on his last lap of the day, but so did everyone else. While rivals unlocked bigger gains as the track evolved, Lawson’s improvement wasn’t enough to climb the order, and he stayed eighth at the flag.
For a driver expected to step aside after this weekend, with Isack Hadjar due back for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix later this month, the context matters. This is a short audition, not a full season. Two top-10 starts from three attempts – the other compromised by an engine penalty at Monza – add weight to his argument that Red Bull should keep him in their 2027 plans.
The team’s decisionmakers now have one more race to judge him on. Lawson has a car in the top 10, a point to prove, and perhaps one last chance to turn a strong qualifying cameo into something that shapes his future.
