WELLINGTON, New Zealand \u2014 New Zealand driver Liam Lawson is looking forward to the start of the new\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0season in Melbourne this weekend, although he says the new-era cars are not \u201csuper fun\u201d to drive.<\/p>\n
Lawson is hoping to build on a troubled 2025 season in which he\u00a0lasted only two races\u00a0with Red Bull before being demoted to the sister Racing Bulls team.<\/p>\n
He had mixed results and was outshone by his teammate Isack Hadjar who\u00a0has now joined Max Verstappen\u00a0at Red Bull. Lawson was the last driver to have his place on the 2026 grid confirmed and has been joined at Racing Bulls by rookie Arvid Lindblad.<\/p>\n
In a New Zealand radio interview Tuesday, Lawson said new regulations which have brought in hybrid power units and different aero setups have been “challenging.”<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways the car moves around quite a bit more and, it depends on how you look at it, that can be more enjoyable,\u201d he said. \u201cBut obviously we\u2019re trying to extract every bit of lap time out of the car and in some ways it feels like you can\u2019t attack as much as you could in the past when you had a lot more downforce.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawson said\u00a02026 cars\u00a0are noticeably smaller and \u201ca little bit more playful\u201d to drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think the main reason for that is just because we have a significant amount of aero taken off the car,” Lawson said. \u201cWhen you have a car that\u2019s extremely high downforce, it\u2019s designed to push through the air in a straight line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Racing Bulls will be using new Red Bull-Ford power units in 2026 and Lawson said his team had been pleased with their reliability. He said reliability would be a key issue early in the season.<\/p>\n
Lawson has learned a lot from last season, despite its challenges.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m grateful to have done that and feel a lot better going into this year but just because of new cars and new regulations it sort of throws a whole new thing in there that is quite unknown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a personal level, I feel very comfortable and excited for the season, but, in a lot of ways obviously with these new cars, there\u2019s a lot of unknowns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australian Grand Prix on the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne will open the 2026 season on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WELLINGTON, New Zealand \u2014 New Zealand driver Liam Lawson is looking forward to the start of the new\u00a0Formula…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-510818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510818","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=510818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}