Liam Lawson says he gathered “experience in every situation” possible in his Formula 1 debut during a chaotic Dutch Grand Prix.
Lawson was drafted in to replace Daniel Ricciardo on Saturday morning after the Australian sustained a broken left-hand courtesy of an incident in Friday’s second practice.
From lights out on Sunday, Lawson was thrown in at the deep end for his maiden F1 race outing, having to contend with mixed weather conditions at either end of the afternoon.
The Kiwi racer also encountered plenty of wheel-to-wheel battles, including pulling a move on the wounded Ferrari of Charles Leclerc to come home 13th.
“I feel like I had experience in every situation in that race with multiple pit stops, wheel-to-wheel racing, rain, dry so it was a good learning experience,” Lawson said.
With rain falling as early as the opening lap and causing a flurry of action as several drivers scrambled to reach the pits for Intermediate tyres, Lawson was handed a 10-second time penalty for impeding Haas’ Kevin Magnussen amid the chaos.
“Throughout the race, I was obviously learning a huge amount,” Lawson added. “The first part wasn’t the best we lost a lot of time with the stacking in the pit stop and the penalty.
“That’s all part of it obviously, but in the second half I think I started to get a bit of feeling on the Softs in clean air and on the Inters as well.”
During the Lawson went wheel-to-wheel with the struggling Leclerc as the pair traded places over a number of laps, with the AlphaTauri deputy admitting it was “eventful”.
“Every time I passed him he just passed me back on the straight so it was a little bit frustrating, but obviously it’s good to get experience.”
The mixed conditions managed to catch out more experienced drivers on the grid, including Zhou Guanyu, who span out to cause a late red flag stoppage.
Although Lawson was able to make it to the chequered flag on debut, beating team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in the process, he wasn’t satisfied with merely finishing.
“Yeah you always look back and I’ll reflect on this and there were definitely things that I would have liked to have done better,” he claimed. “I think I’m reasonably satisfied with that.”
Lawson should get another opportunity at Monza this weekend, with Ricciardo’s recovery expected to keep him out until the Singapore Grand Prix on 15-17 September at the earliest.
