{"id":531076,"date":"2026-07-17T18:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/531076\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:38:11","slug":"formula-1-liam-lawson-solid-in-belgian-grand-prix-practice-given-qualifying-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/531076\/","title":{"rendered":"Formula 1: Liam Lawson solid in Belgian Grand Prix practice, given qualifying boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019ve been focussed on optimising the car and understanding the best way to manage our battery and energy deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll work on that overnight, and hopefully come back stronger tomorrow. The car\u2019s been performing well so far, so the focus now is fine-tuning everything and making the most of the package we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

World championship leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a> of Mercedes was the fastest driver on Friday, setting a best time of 1m 45.944s. That was 0.190s clear of second, McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris.<\/p>\n

All up, the day proved to be productive for Red Bull\u2019s two teams, with all four cars consistently in the top 10. With speculation over an end-of-season exit<\/a>, Max Verstappen topped FP1 and was third in FP2, while Isack Hadjar was also in the top 10 twice. <\/p>\n

Lawson was twice bettered by Racing Bulls teammate Arvid Lindblad, who was inside the top 10 in both sessions, with his FP2 time 0.140s quicker, after also receiving a cooling system upgrade <\/a>for the weekend. <\/p>\n

However, regardless of results in practice, Lawson\u2019s chances of starting inside the top 10 in Monday morning\u2019s grand prix received a boost, after the pair of Hadjar and Norris were handed grid penalties for changing engine components.<\/p>\n

Norris will start 10 places down on where he qualifies, while Hadjar will be at the back of the grid regardless, after both were forced to fit parts outside of the season\u2019s allowed allocations.<\/p>\n

Earlier, in FP1, Lawson\u2019s best lap of 1m 48.432s was 1.362s off the pace, and had him just 0.026s outside the top 10 from the first hour of the weekend.<\/p>\n

With Red Bull\u2019s Ford engine widely considered the best on the grid, Verstappen was the best on display in the opening session, and topped the timesheets with a lap of 1m 47.070s, 0.145s clear of Lewis Hamilton\u2019s Ferrari.<\/p>\n

That mark from the four-time world champion saw the first FP1 session this year that wasn\u2019t topped by a Mercedes or Ferrari car. <\/p>\n

In fact, Lawson was the only Red Bull-powered car outside the top 10, as Hadjar finished fourth, while Lindblad was ninth, off the pace by 0.252s and 1.164s respectively.<\/p>\n

Teams will get one more practice session on Saturday night, before qualifying gets underway at 3am on Sunday morning (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":"\u201cWe\u2019ve been focussed on optimising the car and understanding the best way to manage our battery and energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[53396,137967,11231,29188,19724,10813,78,47525,20409,111,139,69,48211,10521,45788,52871,47527,45434,49478,5339,213,2044],"class_list":["post-531076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-53396","tag-belgian","tag-boost","tag-formula","tag-given","tag-grand","tag-in","tag-lawson","tag-liam","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ones","tag-opening","tag-posting","tag-practice","tag-prix","tag-qualifying","tag-receiving","tag-solid","tag-sports","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531076","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=531076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}