{"id":927177,"date":"2026-10-13T23:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T23:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927177\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T23:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T23:36:13","slug":"formula-1-liam-lawson-to-benefit-from-upgraded-racing-bulls-car-at-us-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927177\/","title":{"rendered":"Formula 1: Liam Lawson to benefit from upgraded Racing Bulls car at US Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

In July, Lawson was overlooked for an upgraded cooling system<\/a> for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, which instead went to teammate Arvid Lindblad.<\/p>\n

Speaking to media after the weekend\u2019s opening practice session, Permane clarified that the 19-year-old had been given the upgrade after an internal challenge between Lawson and Lindblad, with whoever qualified highest for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone<\/a> receiving the new parts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not so easy, we don\u2019t like bringing updates for just one car,\u201d Permane explained at the time. \u201cIt was impossible for us to do it to two cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what I did was sat down with both drivers in Austria, on Saturday evening. We\u2019d had a very good qualifying, I thought \u2018while everyone is in a good mood, I\u2019ll give some bad news. We have a good update coming, but we can only do one car for Spa. The next car will be done for the race after, in Budapest\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suggested the simple option, to make it fair, to upgrade no cars for Spa and then both for Budapest. [Lawson and Lindblad] looked at me like I was crazy. I wouldn\u2019t have ever done that.<\/p>\n

\"LiamLiam Lawson at Spa Francorchamps. Photo \/ Red Bull<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next thing I said was we could flip a coin, or make it a bit of fun and say whoever qualifies in front in Silverstone gets the upgrade. They both signed up for it, and that\u2019s what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson received the upgraded package one race later at the Hungarian Grand Prix<\/a>, and has since gone on a run to become easily the standout midfield driver in the sport.<\/p>\n

The Kiwi currently sits ninth in the drivers championship as the \u201cbest of the rest\u201d<\/a> \u2013 the top driver outside the sport\u2019s top four teams of Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, as Racing Bulls battle Alpine for fifth in the constructors championship \u2013 and an estimated prizemoney windfall of $180 million<\/a> \u2013 Lawson has contributed the bulk of his team\u2019s 100 points, 32 clear of the French constructor in sixth.<\/p>\n

In fact, most tellingly, Lawson\u2019s 75 points \u2013 scored across Racing Bulls and a three-race spell with Red Bull this year \u2013 have him seven clear of Alpine on his own, at a time where an announcement on his future is expected in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The US Grand Prix begins with the opening practice session at 6.30am on October 24 (NZT).<\/p>\n

Alex Powell<\/a> is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In July, Lawson was overlooked for an upgraded cooling system for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[13808,2942,1929,64,14017,63,96377,26457,2651,36177,5865,140083,817,31960,813,816,5587,38857,78778,15448,9051,145550,38858,822,9681,64632,85,19004,319,4207,76026,2489,1050,3605],"class_list":["post-927177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-13808","tag-americas","tag-at","tag-au","tag-austin","tag-australia","tag-benefit","tag-boost","tag-bring","tag-bulls","tag-car","tag-circuit","tag-f1","tag-formula","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-from","tag-grand","tag-lawson","tag-liam","tag-months","tag-package","tag-prix","tag-racing","tag-receive","tag-significant","tag-sports","tag-this","tag-to","tag-upgrade","tag-upgraded","tag-us","tag-will","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}