Horner reveals balance issues for Lawson after tough Shanghai race
On the back of a second tough race weekend for Liam Lawson, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has confirmed that balance issues are currently hindering the New Zealander's performance.
Max Verstappen grabbed a podium place in Saturday's sprint race at Shanghai, but he endured a tough start to the Chinese Grand Prix. The reigning champion had a very slow getaway, and as a result of it he dropped back behind the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
The four-time champion struggled on the mediums in the first stint as he was unable to keep up with his closest rivals. However, in the final stint on the hards as the fuel levels dropped, Verstappen suddenly found some decent speed to force Hamilton into an unplanned second stop before picking off Charles Leclerc to finish fourth in Shanghai.
Commenting on the race weekend in China, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner praised Verstappen for delivering a strong showing in the sprint race and in the second half of the Chinese Grand Prix.
"That was a race of two halves from Max today, following up after a strong Sprint weekend here in Shanghai. We didn't have the straight line speed today as you could see, the Ferrari was properly quick on the straight. Max delivered when he needed to and made a great pass on Charles to finish fourth.
Red Bull's newcomer Liam Lawson suffered a difficult qualifying on Saturday, ending up last in a session in which he seemingly did not encounter any particular issues.
As a consequence of his struggled, Red Bull elected to carry out some tweaks to the suspension of the New Zealander's RB21 which forced him to start in the pit lane. Although he opted for the hards to start the race on, he wound up pitting quite early. As such, he required a second stop which was the slower strategy and came home down in P15.
As for Lawson's performance, Horner confirmed that the Kiwi struggled with balance issues which led to his second difficult race weekend in a row.
"It was a tough day at the office for Liam, he was struggling at points and had some issues with balance. We have plenty to look at after today, we gave away too much in the first stint and we need to understand the limitations that were there.
"We were competitive in the second half of the race but we had given up too much ground at that point. Lots of lessons to takeaway and we know where we need to improve, but we still managed to come away with 12 points and have kept it close with the top competitors these first two fly aways, and we'll look to do more with Japan up next," Horner concluded.
