Liam Lawson felt like he was "faking it" in the first half of his debut Formula 1 race with AlphaTauri. After being parachuted in to replace the injured Daniel Ricciardo, who is not expected to make a return until the Qatar Grand Prix, Lawson had to deal with a mix of conditions which caught out a number of experienced drivers on the grid. He eventually managed to finish the race without any major issues, with him bringing the AlphaTauri as high as 13th place. This was improved at Monza with a better finish of 11th place, the highest finishing position of those on the two-stop strategy.
Lawson: You need confidence in an F1 car
"To drive in F1 you have to have so much confidence with the car, with how fast it is and trying to gain that confidence with it, in those conditions, was probably the most challenging thing," Lawson told media, including RacingNews365 . "We had a very short timeframe, so you're almost kind of faking it until you get that feeling. It only really came probably halfway through the race to be honest." Prior to the Red Flag coming out with nine laps to go at Zandvoort on his debut, a number of drivers went off at Turn 1 including Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc. Lawson believes this was one of the most pivotal moments in his race, as the rain began to become more intense. "When it massively down-poured right before the red flag and cars were going off everywhere, that was extremely difficult not to fire the car off. "It was probably the most important part as well."
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