Red Bull junior LiamLawson30 reflects on a disappointing run to P8 in Suzuka SFormula qualifying, as title rival Tomoki Nojiri goes from near-Q1 elimination to P3:
Asked to quantify how much time was lost with his mistake, Lawson replied:"A couple of tenths. I don’t think we had the speed to fight for pole.
"We tried some adjustments with the car and they didn’t quite work how we wanted it to. Looking back we would have done things differently, but considering the mistake I made on top of that, it really set us back."Lawson will start five places behind his team-mate and championship rival Tomoki Nojiri, who suffered a scare in Q1 as he was almost knocked out before Kamui Kobayashi had his best lap deleted for cutting the chicane.
"I want to make as much progress as I can, but it depends on the strategy and things like that," said the Kiwi."There’s definitely an opportunity to move forward, but it’s going to be tough. It’s hard to overtake here so I’m not sure how far forward we can move. Nojiri for his part had no explanation for his lack of speed in Q1, but said that adjustments made to his Mugen machine for the Q2 pole shootout were enough to put him back in contention for the top spot.
"I was really lucky to make it through to Q2," admitted Nojiri."But while complaining about the car I was able to ask my engineer for some adjustments and we just about made them in time [before Q2]."We couldn't make any detailed changes, it was more like, 'let's just add some more downforce' and we just made some fairly simple adjustments and they worked. Somehow, we were able to make the car just about as easy to drive as possible in Q2.
"I'm still a bit worried about the long-run pace, so I want to try and improve the car further for tomorrow and aim for the win."
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