Liam Lawson walked out of Monza on Friday night with no headlines, no purple sectors, and no drama – just exactly what he and Red Bull wanted: a clean, quietly impressive day of work.
The 24-year-old Kiwi, in only his second consecutive weekend in the Red Bull seat, treated practice like a veteran. No fuss. No overdriving. Just laps, data, and a growing sense that he belongs in this company.
Early statement in FP1
If anyone had forgotten what he did at Zandvoort, Lawson’s opening salvo in Italy was a sharp reminder. Fourth-fastest in FP1 with a 1m 23.433s lap, he parked his Red Bull among the frontrunners and stayed there.
On a circuit that punishes hesitation, he looked anything but tentative.
“It was okay. It’s been, I would say, a productive day,” he said afterwards, downplaying a session that had quietly underlined his adaptability.
While Charles Leclerc lit up the timing screens for Ferrari with a 1m 23.00s to send the tifosi home smiling early, Lawson’s name tucked itself neatly into the top four. Not bad for a stand-in still learning the car.
FP2: less glory, more graft
The afternoon told a different story on paper. Twelfth in FP2 with a 1m 23.660s doesn’t jump off the page, especially when George Russell’s Mercedes led the way with a 1m 22.559s.
But the stopwatch didn’t capture Lawson’s real job in that second session.
“We spent most of FP2 just long running,” he explained. “We did a short run at the start and it felt okay. Then we just did two long runs on the soft and the hard.”
Red Bull turned the session into a race-simulation exercise for him. Tyre life, fuel loads, balance shifts – the sort of unglamorous work that pays off when the lights go out.
Even so, the raw pace wasn’t far away. He finished just 0.283s behind teammate Max Verstappen, who ended FP2 in ninth. For a driver still tuning himself into the nuances of the car, that margin matters.
Much of the run plan revolved around building his understanding of how the Red Bull behaves over distance, something that had bitten him at Zandvoort.
“I think we struggled more — I struggled more — at Zandvoort in the race than quali,” he admitted. “So I’ll try and learn what I can from it.”
Friday at Monza was his answer to that.
Stand-in, not stand-back
Lawson’s presence in the Red Bull this weekend is again born from misfortune elsewhere. Isack Hadjar, still sidelined with a wrist injury, has been ruled out of Monza after failing to recover in time. That opened the door for another outing for Lawson, while Yuki Tsunoda moved into Lawson’s usual Racing Bulls seat for a second straight weekend.
At Zandvoort, Lawson turned that opportunity into a seventh-place finish and a pile of respect up and down the paddock. Monza offers a different exam: less about survival, more about razor-thin margins at 340 km/h.
He described Friday’s running as “good learning” as he continued to get to grips with the Red Bull machinery. The phrase sounded modest. The body of work behind it did not.
Playing the Monza game
Monza has its own tricks. One of them is the tow.
On a track built on straights and chicanes, running in the right pocket of clean-but-helpful air can be worth chunks of time in qualifying. Get it wrong, and you’re stranded. Get it right, and you leapfrog cars you have no business beating on pure downforce.
Friday made that crystal clear, and Lawson knows it.
Around the high-speed layout, he and Red Bull spent time thinking not just about balance and tyres, but about positioning – who to follow, when to push, when to back off.
“For sure, it’s something we’ll discuss, and we’ll come up with a plan,” he said of the tow games that will inevitably unfold in qualifying.
At the sharp end, Leclerc and Russell set the pace for Ferrari and Mercedes, giving the Italian Grand Prix a familiar script at the front. Behind them, the midfield and the substitutes are writing their own.
Qualifying comes on Sunday (2am NZT), the race on Monday (1am NZT). Lawson has one day left to turn “productive” into something far more dangerous for the established order.
