Liam Lawson reflects on Racing Bulls 'deep dive'

Liam Lawson says the weekends that went wrong are the ones that stand out most to him from Racing Bulls' F1 season so far, and that the team has done a "deep dive" into the races where things unravelled.

The New Zealander is ninth in the drivers' championship on 43 points after 11 rounds, with Racing Bulls fifth in the constructors' standings on 66 points.

He has scored in eight of the first 11 grands prix, recording a best finish of sixth on two occasions, at Monaco and Silverstone, and comfortably leads rookie team-mate Arvid Lindblad, who sits 11th on 23 points — even if their levels of performance have become closer of late.

But when asked to identify the high points of his season so far, Lawson's answer was telling.

"Nothing massively standout," the 24-year-old told the official F1 website.

"We had some really good races; Monaco was very, very strong, Austria was great, Silverstone was great, but they were all honestly quite similar in the way that we built up through the weekend, and I really feel like we extracted everything out of the car each time."

Instead, it is the rounds where things fell apart that have stayed with him most. Lawson retired from the Miami Grand Prix and failed to score in Belgium, where he finished P12.

"The standout ones are probably the ones that didn't go so well, which is more of a good thing to have less of those, like we've had," he said. "But they're the ones that obviously we need to learn the most from.

"In Miami as a whole, we struggled for pace all weekend, and then Spa as well, especially on my side of the garage; it was more of a tough weekend. They're the ones that you sort of do a deep dive into and try and understand more."