Liam Lawson reveals investigation after 'big deficit' to Arvid Lindblad

Liam Lawson has said his side of the garage at Racing Bulls needed to do some digging after he was on the receiving end of a "big deficit" to Arvid Lindblad at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The New Zealander finished P12 at Spa-Francorchamps whilst his rookie team-mate scored two points from a ninth-place finish, having enjoyed the upper hand all weekend, including a half-second delta between the two VCARB 03s in qualifying.

Much of that gap was due to Lindblad having a chassis upgrade that Lawson did not, having won the right to the update by going quicker in the grid-setting session at the British Grand Prix as part of a bet between the pair and team principal Alan Permane.

However, the latter was quick to point out that not all of his pace disadvantage was due to being one development behind the former.

It left Lawson powerless to defend against the 18-year-old during the grand prix at Spa-Francorchamps, with the two drivers coming perilously close to blows as the Lindblad charged back through after a pit stop, in action that was only briefly shown on F1 broadcast in a cutaway box on the timing tower.

"They [the F1 broadcast] didn't show any of it, I don't think," Lawson told media including RacingNews365. "But I don't know many cars that have gone side-by-side through Eau Rouge and carried on down the whole straight like we did. So yeah, it was good.

The 24-year-old felt that Lindblad would have worked his way past regardless of how their duel panned out, conceding that he could not match the other Racing Bulls' pace.

"Honestly, I mean, last weekend he [Arvid] was definitely quicker," he added. "So it wasn't something I could really fight too hard against, honestly; he was going to drive away from me anyway, so it's all good."

Lawson will also have the chassis upgrade this weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and hopes that the investigations undertaken on his side of the garage can help establish why he was lacking performance compared to Lindblad in the Ardennes Forest.

"Overall, we should have an even stronger car, hopefully, this weekend," he said. "Obviously, for me, hopefully, it's a step closer to the other car because that was a big deficit last weekend, but I also can't sit here and say that it's just the upgrade that was different because it wasn't meant to be that big.

"So there's definitely a lot of things that we've looked into from last weekend to try and fix for this weekend, and we'll find out pretty quickly as well, obviously, when we get going tomorrow."