{"id":26919,"date":"2025-07-27T03:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T03:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/26919\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T03:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T03:09:09","slug":"f1-news-liam-lawson-qualifies-ninth-for-belgian-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/26919\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news: Liam Lawson qualifies ninth for Belgian Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Liam
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLiam Lawson was left disappointed after qualifying, despite his second highest quali finish of the season. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n

The Racing Bulls driver will start Sunday\u2019s race from ninth, his equal-second best result of 2025 and just his third Q3 appearance of the year. But the Kiwi felt a small error cost him a shot at something even better.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, yeah. I think the car was in the best place it\u2019s been,\u201d Lawson told Sky Sports F1.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust tiny mistakes, well, one small mistake to be honest, that cost a bit of lap time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the margin for P5 is a tenth and a half away or whatever it is, so it\u2019s frustrating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do feel like we missed out on today. Obviously tomorrow\u2019s the important day to perform.\u201d<\/p>\n

It marked just his third Q3 appearance of the season, with points scored on both previous occasions.<\/p>\n

\t\tWATCH: Supercars stars in Supercheap Auto \u2018Police Chase\u2019 Click here<\/a> <\/p>\n

He\u2019ll also be looking to bounce back from his last outing at Silverstone, where he was taken out on the opening lap<\/a> and left to rue a more cautious approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I look back to a couple of weeks ago, I was almost too cautious,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew we were going to have a quick race car and it ended up wiping me out. So tomorrow we\u2019ll just try and make the best out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rain is expected to play a role in Sunday\u2019s race, with the challenge of Eau Rouge in the wet front of mind for Lawson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone has probably taken that into consideration today and maybe compromised a bit,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, it will be what it\u2019ll be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for me I\u2019m not going to stress about whether it rains or not and just try and drive as fast as I can tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cEau Rouge is going to be quick in the wet. So if it does start wet, it\u2019s going to rain tomorrow, if it is at the start, but yeah, let\u2019s see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strong qualifying effort comes in Alan Permane\u2019s first weekend in charge as Racing Bulls team principal.<\/p>\n

Permane, who stepped in following Laurent Mekies\u2019 promotion to Red Bull after Christian Horner\u2019s shock dismissal<\/a>, was pleased with how the team rebounded after a frustrating sprint Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very good,\u201d Permane said. \u201cWe were a bit fed up yesterday actually. Even though we qualified in the sprint reasonably well, we felt we had more potential than that. So we spent a lot of time looking at what we could\u2019ve done better\u2026 and it paid off today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Permane noted that both drivers benefitted from balance tweaks heading into Saturday, but said the team stuck with the same core setup despite the threat of rain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t change the downforce levels or anything,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo we just tweaked the balance to what the guys had in sprint qualifying and then of course we had 14 laps this morning to really feel the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson will start the race one spot behind teammate Isack Hadjar, who qualified in eighth.<\/p>\n

Norris snatches pole from Piastri in tight Belgian GP qualifying<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson was left disappointed after qualifying, despite his second highest quali finish of the season. Image: XPB…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,3027,21415,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-26919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-liam-lawson","14":"tag-slot3","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}