{"id":639807,"date":"2026-10-24T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639807\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T08:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T08:00:12","slug":"best-case-lawson-shows-pace-in-texas-on-first-day-of-us-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639807\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Best case’: Lawson shows pace in Texas on first day of US Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Lawson proved to be a strong competitor ahead of the US Grand Prix at his “favourite” track in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

Off the back of a musical performance in front of a large crowd of supporters and Formula 1 legend Daniel Ricciardo, Lawson showed his skills behind the wheel matched those on a guitar and microphone.<\/p>\n

The New Zealander placed sixth in Free Practice Two with a lap time of 1.36.331, improving on his FP1 position of 10th.<\/p>\n

Lawson’s fastest lap in the first practice was deleted after he breached track limits, relegating him from ninth.<\/p>\n

\"Liam<\/p>\n

Liam Lawson predicts his Racing Bulls car will make Q3 in Sunday’s Qualifying. (Source: F1)<\/p>\n

Although a P6 result looked promising, he warned against expecting similar results come Qualifying.<\/p>\n

“We are fighting where we normally are, hopefully a little further away from the others,” Lawson said.<\/p>\n

“I think a P9 is probably the best case.”<\/p>\n

Prior to getting out on track, Lawson spoke about his excitement of returning to Circuit of the Americas, hopeful of a good race result.<\/p>\n

“It would be great to have a strong weekend, I think we\u2019ve had a good season and a good run of recent races,” Lawson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably my favourite on the calendar to drive – I\u2019m excited, it’s always a good atmosphere here.”<\/p>\n

Lawson’s string of consistency put him in a solid position to be resigned for Racing Bulls next year, as he and teammate Arvid Lindblad were yet to be confirmed as drivers for 2027.<\/p>\n

There remained three seats available for next season, with F2 driver Rafael Camara recently signed to debut for Haas.<\/p>\n

\"Charles<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc drives his Ferrari to double P1 in practices. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Ferrari out front<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc was the hero of the Saturday sessions, powering to first in both practices. <\/p>\n

In FP1 he set a time of 1.36.052, leading from Max Verstappen in second and reigning World Champion Lando Norris in third. <\/p>\n

The Ferrari driver repeated his performance for FP2, improving on his previous time and narrowly beating championship leader and Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli by 0.042 of a second.<\/p>\n

When asked about Ferrari’s goal to secure second in the Constructors Championship, Leclerc said it’s not something he “really cares of”, choosing instead to focus on winning races.<\/p>\n

The most important for us is focussing race by race and trying to get as many wins as possible from now until the end of the season,” he said.<\/p>\n

“To actually win races by the end of the year would be a good sign.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson proved to be a strong competitor ahead of the US Grand Prix at his “favourite” track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-639807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639807","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=639807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}