{"id":497031,"date":"2026-06-26T19:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T19:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/497031\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T19:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T19:04:10","slug":"formula-1-liam-lawson-quick-on-shortened-day-of-austrian-grand-prix-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/497031\/","title":{"rendered":"Formula 1: Liam Lawson quick on shortened day of Austrian Grand Prix practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s still plenty of work to do tomorrow. It\u2019s incredibly close in the midfield, so we\u2019ll need to stay on top of everything and make sure we keep finding those small improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n

With just one session to get back to grips on a track where he finished sixth last year<\/a>, Lawson was still able to post a best time of 1m 08.235s from 34 laps on track.<\/p>\n

World championship leader<\/a>, Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes, set the fastest time of the day, 1m 07.014s, to be 0.237s clear of the next best \u2013 McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri \u2013 and 1.221s ahead of Lawson.<\/p>\n

The Kiwi did claim practice bragging rights over his teammate, as Lindblad finished with the 12th best time in FP2, 0.143s back from Lawson.<\/p>\n

With temperatures exceeding 30C and more than 50C on track, more than one driver complained of their brakes overheating throughout the weekend\u2019s first day.<\/p>\n

In his limited running time, Lawson\u2019s first half of FP2 ran sets of medium tyres, and put in a best lap of 1m 09.012s to sit at the lower end of the top 10.<\/p>\n

Switching to softs in the final 30 minutes, Lawson immediately improved his best time for a lap of 1m 08.508s, and then again to 1m 08.235s.<\/p>\n

After returning to the pits, Lawson emerged with a new set of medium tyres to finish the session, and simulate a race run, without improving on his best lap again before the chequered flag. <\/p>\n

Lawson will get one further practice session on Saturday night (NZT), before qualifying on Sunday morning. <\/p>\n

Earlier, Antonelli set the pace in FP1 to start the weekend, with a best lap of 1m 07.796s, just 0.040s ahead of his teammate George Russell in second, before a red flag triggered by Cadillac\u2019s Sergio Perez stopping on the track prematurely ended the session.<\/p>\n

In promising signs for Racing Bulls, Lindblad set the sixth-best time, 1m 08.726s to trail Antonelli by 0.930s. In Lawson\u2019s Racing Bulls car, Iwasa set the 15th-best time of the session, 1.841s off the pace, as one of six rookies given an FP1 session.<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s Dino Beganovic \u2013 deputising for Charles Leclerc \u2013 was the best of the rookies, clocking the 10th best time, 1.258s off the pace.<\/p>\n

Qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix begins at 2am on Sunday (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":"\u201cThere\u2019s still plenty of work to do tomorrow. It\u2019s incredibly close in the midfield, so we\u2019ll need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[53396,10751,22947,96439,5972,29420,29188,10813,142817,47525,20409,111,139,35837,69,1118,90,48211,52871,47527,16156,29952,169044,248586,213,2044],"class_list":["post-497031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-53396","tag-austrian","tag-bull","tag-clocked","tag-day","tag-fastest","tag-formula","tag-grand","tag-impressed","tag-lawson","tag-liam","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-ninth","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-ones","tag-practice","tag-prix","tag-quick","tag-ring","tag-shortened","tag-spielbergs","tag-sports","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}