How Liam Lawson Dragged Points From a Weekend That Had No Right to Deliver Them

Liam Lawson left Shanghai with eight championship points and a quiet but firm argument for why he belongs in the conversation about the best performing drivers of 2026’s opening weeks.



It was not a weekend defined by raw pace, and Lawson would be the first to admit that the Racing Bulls package was not quick enough to earn those points on merit alone.



Saturday’s Sprint gave the first hint of what was possible when Racing Bulls made an unconventional call to start him 13th on hard compound tyres.



No driver made more overtakes across the 19-lap Sprint than the New Zealander, who carved through six cars before a safety car triggered by Nico Hulkenberg’s stoppage reshuffled the order in his favour.



“We had strong track position towards the end, so when the Safety Car came out we didn’t want to give that up,” Lawson explained.



“It was a bold strategy, but it worked out nicely and we were able to bring home some points.”



The immediate downside was that using his preferred hard set in the Sprint left him with only one remaining set for Sunday’s grand prix, a constraint he acknowledged heading into qualifying.



“Tomorrow will be hard for us to fight for the points,” he said on Saturday. “Yes, it potentially hurts us a little bit.”



Qualifying then produced a 14th-place slot after double yellow flags from a Gabriel Bortoleto spin forced him to abort a genuinely promising final lap.



“We were on a really good lap at the end and had everything coming together before the double yellow flags forced us to abort in the final corner, which was a shame,” Lawson said.



From 14th on the grid, the race unfolded with enough chaos to make his tyre disadvantage largely irrelevant, as both McLarens failed to start and multiple front runners encountered reliability trouble.



A safety car for Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin on lap ten arrived at the worst possible moment, catching Lawson on fresh tyres shortly after his pit stop.



“We had a poorly timed Safety Car, and at that moment I thought our race might be over,” he said.



He spent the second half of the race managing the situation carefully, held off Hadjar in the closing laps, and ultimately finished seventh after Max Verstappen’s retirement promoted him further up the order.



“Yeah, I mean for the speed we had this weekend, it’s very, very positive. We definitely didn’t expect to have two points finishers,” he reflected after the chequered flag.



Racing Bulls head of trackside engineering Mattia Spini credited the team’s willingness to commit to an unconventional plan: “We made an unconventional call to start Liam on the Hard tyre for the Sprint, expecting the compound to be more resilient to graining.”



Lawson sits ninth in the drivers’ championship, which given the car’s raw pace in Shanghai, represents a meaningful overperformance that will give the team plenty of confidence heading to Suzuka.
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