Liam Lawson secured seventh place at the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday, equaling his best result of the 2024 season despite enduring one of the most challenging weekends of his Formula 1 career. The Racing Bulls driver openly admitted he “just survived” the Montreal race after a series of technical setbacks severely hampered his preparation throughout the weekend.
Lawson’s difficulties began during Friday practice when a significant technical problem limited him to just five laps around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve before sprint qualifying. The issue proved too severe for the Racing Bulls mechanics to resolve in time, forcing the New Zealand driver to miss sprint qualifying entirely and head into Saturday’s sprint race with virtually no track time.
“Honestly, it’s been a crazy weekend,” Lawson told F1 media. “I’ve never had that where I’ve missed an entire day. Obviously, the teams are very, very good at rebuilding cars. But the issue we had was severe, and also here [in Canada] you can’t recover the car during the session. So it put us out for Friday, and I tried to prepare for quali, but it was honestly harder than I expected.”
Despite the setbacks, Lawson narrowly missed advancing to Q3 for Sunday’s grand prix but managed to capitalize on race day retirements. As several drivers ahead of him encountered problems and dropped out, the 22-year-old found himself promoted into the points-paying positions and successfully defended his position against Alpine’s Pierre Gasly to claim valuable championship points.
“We put the car nearly in Q3, but missed out, and then [on Sunday], we just survived,” Lawson explained. “A lot of guys retired, and we survived.” The result continues Lawson’s steady points-scoring form for Racing Bulls as he looks to establish himself as a permanent fixture on the F1 grid.