Liam Lawson makes 'no real idea' admission amid eye-catching Racing Bulls campaign

Liam Lawson has conceded that Racing Bulls entered the F1 season with genuine uncertainty over the competitiveness of the VCARB 03, making their strong first half of the campaign all the more impressive.

The New Zealander heads into the summer break ninth in the drivers' standings on 43 points, with Racing Bulls sitting fifth in the constructors' championship on 66 points after 11 rounds. It is a return that few inside the team's Faenza factory would have predicted when the new regulations came into force.

For Lawson, eight top 10 finishes from 11 grands prix, including P6 results in Monaco and at Silverstone, have underlined the progress of a team that started the year unsure of where it stood.

"Honestly, I think at the start of the year we had no real idea, and it was probably very open-ended in the way that we were feeling; we didn't know how strong we'd be," Lawson told the official F1 website.

"The car was difficult at the start of the year so I definitely wasn't confident about how the year would go, but just very focused on trying to make sure I had a good understanding of the new regulations and how to extract everything out of them.

"And then we very quickly found a lot of performance out of the car, and that's been really working."

Lawson's P13 on the opening weekend in Australia offered little encouragement for him, even though rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad was able to score points on his F1 debut.

However, the picture shifted dramatically for Lawson one week later in Shanghai. A seventh-place finish in both the sprint and the grand prix delivered eight points across the Chinese Grand Prix weekend and set the tone for what was to follow.

When asked how important that result was for building momentum, the 24-year-old was in no doubt.

"It was very important, I think," he said. "We found a good direction quite early, and everything we developed and made since then has been working very, very well. Obviously everyone enjoys having good results; I think it keeps the motivation of the team very high."