March 14, 2025 • 13 mins
Liam Lawson’s first day as a fulltime Formula 1 driver was a bit of a mixed bag.
The practice drives got under way at the Melbourne Grand Prix earlier today.
The 23-year-old's first practice sessions on the Albert Park track saw him set poor times, finishing 16th and 17th in the two outings.
Bob McMurray joins Piney to discuss Lawson's practice rounds.
“Give the bloke a chance – he’s never been to Melbourne as a racing driver before, he’s never been in a session as intense as this before.”
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And even back then he was determined to do this
and here we are, Here we are. He's looking for
a bit of extra speed though. His first two practice
practice sessions on the Albert Park track yesterday, Liam Lawson
saw him set the sixteenth and seventeenth fast times and
the two outings McLaren's Orlando Noris set the pace in
the first session, third and the second session. Charl Leclair
(00:34):
also pretty quick, highly respected motorsport identity and bring the
experience of three decades with McLaren Formula one to the show.
Bob McMurray is with us. Bob good to chat is
always what can or should we read into Liam's practice
times yesterday?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hi, piny Well, Yes, that's a big call, but not
a lot, is my first reaction. That was day one
out of seventy two days. He's got another seventy one
to go the second one today. Yes he was he
was slow, There's no doubt about it. He was slow.
But the only thing he's got to think about really
(01:13):
is that he is going to be compared to his
teammate and his teammate Max with Stappan is also struggling now.
In the second session, Liam was half a second, just
over half a second slower than for Stappen, and that's
not so bad really in a car that is clearly
a bit reculcitrant.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Ronnie read last night that in many ways Liam's car
was different to max is in that Liam was running
the old floor and the old space nose and things
like that, So they are experimenting. It doesn't take away
the fact that he's seventeenth or something on the grid
and everybody was expecting him or not on the grid
so in practice and everybody was expecting him to be,
(01:56):
you know, right up there with Max and all the
rest of the stuff. But for goodness sake, it's give
the blood the chance. He's never been to Melbourne as
a racing driver before, never been in a session as
intense as this before. He's in a situation now where
people are going to comment if he doesn't shave that day,
(02:17):
or if he seems to have one eye shorter than
the other or something like that. He is under intense
scrutiny and it's got to I don't know how strong
he is. It's going to take a little bit of
time to get your bum in the seat and to
get used to all that stuff going on around you. So, yes,
he was slow. I don't put it down to anything
other than fuel loads, trying to get the car to
(02:40):
work and all the other stuff, unfamiliarity with the track
and that sort of thing. So if he's over the
rest of the weekend time, but he's he's just got
to start learning every single second he gets to get
that car fast. As simple as that.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You want to come back to talking about the car
and the speed of it. Leam's driving in a moment.
But something you said there is really interesting to me,
and that is the intense spotlight that goes on to
him and all of these drivers when they reach, you know,
the elite level of being a full time Formula One driver.
You've known Liam for a long time. How do your
assist his ability to cope with that?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Oh? He has the ability, no doubt. He's a pretty
determined young man. He's a fairly brusque young man on
the track, as was proven by his performances last year
when he was getting in all sorts of clashes. But
he is being looked at a little example yesterday from
people who should know better. He was coming out of
the bits. I don't know if anybody saw this. As
(03:36):
cars do, they leave quite a lot of space between
them and the car in front, so they can get
some space to not be in the set stream and
all that sort of thing in the car in front.
So he was slow coming down, following MaTx with staff
and out of the pits, and he was slow, slow, slow.
On the right hand side, there was a little line
of cars led by Lando Norris. Liiam Lawson was in
(03:59):
the and he's not allowed to stop in the pit lane.
By the way, he was going as slow as he
possibly could to make the gap. He went past to
Lando Norris, and then Lando decided to launch his car
in the practice start. Immediately immediately the commentators who should
know better said it was Lando Norris. It was Liam
(04:20):
Lawson's fault for not giving way to Lando Norris. What's
he supposed to do. Is he's supposed to part in
the pit land and be fined. Is he supposed to
just say after you Lando? No, he's not. So everything
he's doing is being scrutinized in extreme detail, especially on
this side of the world, and he's been. I think
(04:40):
I'm fairly picked on a lot of the time by
all sorts of people. He's got to learn. He's going
to learn. He has the ability to learn. But he's
got a tough job. As everybody has said, he's got
a tough job. He's just got to get his head
down and do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
If we talk about today and then on to tomorrow,
Bob can can they make the improvements to the car
today into the way that Liam drives it in time
for him to qualify in the top half of the
grid later on too.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Historically Red Bull have been able to do that. Historically
over the last couple of three or four seasons, a
first day of practice on a Friday has not necessarily
been the best day for them. Yet they have the
ability or have had the ability to have the whether
drivers are doing the simulation work, and many times, of
course in the last couple of three years that was
(05:30):
Liam doing that back in the factory. So they have
the ability to change that car. They have the engineering
nous to do it. But clearly that car is not
as good as it was last year. In the testing
at Bahrain, they had a lot of trouble with the
car Max with Staffin was not happy with the car.
He is still not happy with the car. You can
(05:51):
see that they're not happy with the car because of
all the work that was going on in the practice
in Max with Staffin's garage, with the car up on
the stands during the one hour of practice. In the
second hours, that's something that doesn't normally happen. It's usually twigs,
it's not a wholesale change of suspension, which they were doing.
(06:13):
Plus the fact you don't know just how much fuel
and stuff everybody's using. The V card that and Liam
Wilson got out of last year, which is now being
driven by Isaac Hadja. He was running on very very
low fuel. They've admitted that, whereas Liam may have had
three quarters race fuel or something. We don't know that.
(06:35):
So really, this afternoon or this evening and qualifying, that's
the time when you really got to look at how
things are shaping up. I don't think he's going to
be that much faster than he was today, well yesterday, sorry,
but he's just got to get a little bit closer
(06:56):
to Max, simple as that, and.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The Red Bull set up Max for Stepan is obviously
the number one driver in that team. Bob. So how
much resource will Liam be getting given that he is
very much number two to Max for Stepan.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He will be. He is the number two driver and
he is there to support Maxistappen. Therefore, if Maxistappen thinks
it's better that they put them the steering wheel behind
his head so he can drive backwards, it will be done.
If he thinks can drive faster that way, and then
it will be done on Liam's car. So regardless in
many ways of Liam having his own team there, they
(07:36):
will sacrifice everything to get Max Forstappen to be the
fastest or to be better, and the second driver will
always have to follow the ethos that Max has put
on the car, except for fine tweaks to suit the driver.
Now this is something once again that Liam must get
his mum in the seat on and assert some authority
(07:56):
over his own car, saying I don't like it over
steering like this? Can we do just stop it? I
don't like it under steering? Can we do something to
stop it. The more more he can prove that he
can tune his car to his way of driving and
show that he is faster doing that, the more the
garage will turn onto his side as well, and to
(08:18):
help him go faster. They don't want him to go
slow by any means at all, but they do want
Max to go faster, and Liam to a certain extent
will have to follow follow the path dridden by Max.
But by the same token, if he can make his
own pass, they will support that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Such an interesting thing you said as well before, Bob,
about yesterday being day one of seventy two, I mean
twenty four Grand Prix before we finished the season in
early December in Abu Dhabi. How do they balance it though?
You know that because all sports fans, and I'm sure
all sports teams want one is instant results. Our teams
like red ball, you know, are they known for being
(08:58):
patient or or if we look back to last year,
are they not so much known for that.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
No, they're not known from being patient at all. And
I don't like doing it, but I was reading some
social media. There's about eighty percent of the people saying,
told you so, get Lawson out of there, et cetera,
et cetera. It's absolutely I was going to use a
word that rubbish. I'll say, I'm some rubbish for that
sort of thing. He's they're going to give him a
(09:23):
half a season minimum, and I do not doubt that
in the first two or three races as they come up,
that Liam is going to improve his position. I do
not doubt they employed him because they know him. He's
been there longer than almost any other driver apart from
Max with staff and in that system, in that Red
Bull system, so they know exactly what he's capable of.
(09:45):
They didn't choose him just because he looks good and
it looks like a male model or whatever. He is
chosen because they know he can do the job ultimately,
and he's got to stick with that. Mentally, he's got
to stick with the fact that they preferred him over
anybody else to be mex with Staffan's partner this year.
So stick with it. And you know, he's simply got
(10:08):
to work hard and for the team to work hard
to get the cars faster. He just needs to be
closer to Max in pretty much all conditions. As Helmet
Marcos said, three tenths of a second, they'll allow him,
and that's that's about it. Okay, yesterday he was obviously
five tenths of the second, five sixpence of a second. Piney,
(10:30):
that's not an awful lot, is it. But the problem
is in these days of Formula one, you can go
from seventh to seventeenth in just five tenths of a second.
Half a second, not a lot. So he's he's just
got to get better and better. What he doesn't have
to do is what Oliver Behman did yesterday and the
throat thing in the wall that is, although they him
(10:51):
did kiss the wall in practice, just just a light touch,
just the notes there. So yeah, he's he's on a
trajectory and this is this is you know, like base
what do they call it, ever is based one or
something like that. That's what he worries out of the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's a great filter to look at it through zooming
out of it. McLaren, Norris and Pastree, Ferrari, Leclair and
Hamilton as McLaren. The faster is that the faster car McLaren.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It has been proven to be the faster car over
a race distance at the moment. Leclaire and the Ferrari
have come up with a faster time as of yesterday,
and it may well be a faster car on that track.
The Ferrari does have a good record on that track.
There's no doubt about that, but I think it's all
going to sort out as we go along. I mean,
(11:45):
yesterday was a little bit screwed up. I think in times,
I don't think you're going to see the Times yesterday
or the order of the Times yesterday translated into qualifying today. Certainly,
Lucle it's going to be at the top Norris's Pastree
most likely, and you could have got to say probably
Hamilton's going to be there as well. But the rest
(12:07):
of it is all mixed up. Different fuels, different car engines,
different powers set ups, different power availability. All things will
be will be proven basically in the first qualifying of
the year. Essentially, we're still in the testing phase from
the Bahrain test, where each driver got about a day
day and a half, including Liam in the car. And
(12:28):
Liam's day was disrupted enormously by rain, so he hasn't
had time in the car. Not many of these drivers have.
And the really is the old saying the rubber hits
the road this afternoon in qualifying too.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Bob, thanks so much for your time. I always learned
plenty listening to you. Thanks for taking our call, and
enjoy the rest of the weekend. We'll catch up again,
so thank you, Bony, my pleasure, all the best mate,
Bobby Murray there gee he talks good scenes, doesn't he.
Like I said, I just always learned so much about
motor sport and about the intricacies of it from listening
(13:05):
to Bob McMurray.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Lack for more from Weekends Sport with Jason Fine. Listen
live to News Talk Set B Weekends from midday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And even back then he was determined to do this
and here we are, Here we are. He's looking for
a bit of extra speed though. His first two practice
practice sessions on the Albert Park track yesterday, Liam Lawson
saw him set the sixteenth and seventeenth fast times and
the two outings McLaren's Orlando Noris set the pace in
the first session, third and the second session. Charl Leclair
(00:34):
also pretty quick, highly respected motorsport identity and bring the
experience of three decades with McLaren Formula one to the show.
Bob McMurray is with us. Bob good to chat is
always what can or should we read into Liam's practice
times yesterday?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hi, piny Well, Yes, that's a big call, but not
a lot, is my first reaction. That was day one
out of seventy two days. He's got another seventy one
to go the second one today. Yes he was he
was slow, There's no doubt about it. He was slow.
But the only thing he's got to think about really
(01:13):
is that he is going to be compared to his
teammate and his teammate Max with Stappan is also struggling now.
In the second session, Liam was half a second, just
over half a second slower than for Stappen, and that's
not so bad really in a car that is clearly
a bit reculcitrant.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Ronnie read last night that in many ways Liam's car
was different to max is in that Liam was running
the old floor and the old space nose and things
like that, So they are experimenting. It doesn't take away
the fact that he's seventeenth or something on the grid
and everybody was expecting him or not on the grid
so in practice and everybody was expecting him to be,
(01:56):
you know, right up there with Max and all the
rest of the stuff. But for goodness sake, it's give
the blood the chance. He's never been to Melbourne as
a racing driver before, never been in a session as
intense as this before. He's in a situation now where
people are going to comment if he doesn't shave that day,
(02:17):
or if he seems to have one eye shorter than
the other or something like that. He is under intense
scrutiny and it's got to I don't know how strong
he is. It's going to take a little bit of
time to get your bum in the seat and to
get used to all that stuff going on around you. So, yes,
he was slow. I don't put it down to anything
other than fuel loads, trying to get the car to
(02:40):
work and all the other stuff, unfamiliarity with the track
and that sort of thing. So if he's over the
rest of the weekend time, but he's he's just got
to start learning every single second he gets to get
that car fast. As simple as that.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You want to come back to talking about the car
and the speed of it. Leam's driving in a moment.
But something you said there is really interesting to me,
and that is the intense spotlight that goes on to
him and all of these drivers when they reach, you know,
the elite level of being a full time Formula One driver.
You've known Liam for a long time. How do your
assist his ability to cope with that?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Oh? He has the ability, no doubt. He's a pretty
determined young man. He's a fairly brusque young man on
the track, as was proven by his performances last year
when he was getting in all sorts of clashes. But
he is being looked at a little example yesterday from
people who should know better. He was coming out of
the bits. I don't know if anybody saw this. As
(03:36):
cars do, they leave quite a lot of space between
them and the car in front, so they can get
some space to not be in the set stream and
all that sort of thing in the car in front.
So he was slow coming down, following MaTx with staff
and out of the pits, and he was slow, slow, slow.
On the right hand side, there was a little line
of cars led by Lando Norris. Liiam Lawson was in
(03:59):
the and he's not allowed to stop in the pit lane.
By the way, he was going as slow as he
possibly could to make the gap. He went past to
Lando Norris, and then Lando decided to launch his car
in the practice start. Immediately immediately the commentators who should
know better said it was Lando Norris. It was Liam
(04:20):
Lawson's fault for not giving way to Lando Norris. What's
he supposed to do. Is he's supposed to part in
the pit land and be fined. Is he supposed to
just say after you Lando? No, he's not. So everything
he's doing is being scrutinized in extreme detail, especially on
this side of the world, and he's been. I think
(04:40):
I'm fairly picked on a lot of the time by
all sorts of people. He's got to learn. He's going
to learn. He has the ability to learn. But he's
got a tough job. As everybody has said, he's got
a tough job. He's just got to get his head
down and do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
If we talk about today and then on to tomorrow,
Bob can can they make the improvements to the car
today into the way that Liam drives it in time
for him to qualify in the top half of the
grid later on too.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Historically Red Bull have been able to do that. Historically
over the last couple of three or four seasons, a
first day of practice on a Friday has not necessarily
been the best day for them. Yet they have the
ability or have had the ability to have the whether
drivers are doing the simulation work, and many times, of
course in the last couple of three years that was
(05:30):
Liam doing that back in the factory. So they have
the ability to change that car. They have the engineering
nous to do it. But clearly that car is not
as good as it was last year. In the testing
at Bahrain, they had a lot of trouble with the
car Max with Staffin was not happy with the car.
He is still not happy with the car. You can
(05:51):
see that they're not happy with the car because of
all the work that was going on in the practice
in Max with Staffin's garage, with the car up on
the stands during the one hour of practice. In the
second hours, that's something that doesn't normally happen. It's usually twigs,
it's not a wholesale change of suspension, which they were doing.
(06:13):
Plus the fact you don't know just how much fuel
and stuff everybody's using. The V card that and Liam
Wilson got out of last year, which is now being
driven by Isaac Hadja. He was running on very very
low fuel. They've admitted that, whereas Liam may have had
three quarters race fuel or something. We don't know that.
(06:35):
So really, this afternoon or this evening and qualifying, that's
the time when you really got to look at how
things are shaping up. I don't think he's going to
be that much faster than he was today, well yesterday, sorry,
but he's just got to get a little bit closer
(06:56):
to Max, simple as that, and.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The Red Bull set up Max for Stepan is obviously
the number one driver in that team. Bob. So how
much resource will Liam be getting given that he is
very much number two to Max for Stepan.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He will be. He is the number two driver and
he is there to support Maxistappen. Therefore, if Maxistappen thinks
it's better that they put them the steering wheel behind
his head so he can drive backwards, it will be done.
If he thinks can drive faster that way, and then
it will be done on Liam's car. So regardless in
many ways of Liam having his own team there, they
(07:36):
will sacrifice everything to get Max Forstappen to be the
fastest or to be better, and the second driver will
always have to follow the ethos that Max has put
on the car, except for fine tweaks to suit the driver.
Now this is something once again that Liam must get
his mum in the seat on and assert some authority
(07:56):
over his own car, saying I don't like it over
steering like this? Can we do just stop it? I
don't like it under steering? Can we do something to
stop it. The more more he can prove that he
can tune his car to his way of driving and
show that he is faster doing that, the more the
garage will turn onto his side as well, and to
(08:18):
help him go faster. They don't want him to go
slow by any means at all, but they do want
Max to go faster, and Liam to a certain extent
will have to follow follow the path dridden by Max.
But by the same token, if he can make his
own pass, they will support that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Such an interesting thing you said as well before, Bob,
about yesterday being day one of seventy two, I mean
twenty four Grand Prix before we finished the season in
early December in Abu Dhabi. How do they balance it though?
You know that because all sports fans, and I'm sure
all sports teams want one is instant results. Our teams
like red ball, you know, are they known for being
(08:58):
patient or or if we look back to last year,
are they not so much known for that.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
No, they're not known from being patient at all. And
I don't like doing it, but I was reading some
social media. There's about eighty percent of the people saying,
told you so, get Lawson out of there, et cetera,
et cetera. It's absolutely I was going to use a
word that rubbish. I'll say, I'm some rubbish for that
sort of thing. He's they're going to give him a
(09:23):
half a season minimum, and I do not doubt that
in the first two or three races as they come up,
that Liam is going to improve his position. I do
not doubt they employed him because they know him. He's
been there longer than almost any other driver apart from
Max with staff and in that system, in that Red
Bull system, so they know exactly what he's capable of.
(09:45):
They didn't choose him just because he looks good and
it looks like a male model or whatever. He is
chosen because they know he can do the job ultimately,
and he's got to stick with that. Mentally, he's got
to stick with the fact that they preferred him over
anybody else to be mex with Staffan's partner this year.
So stick with it. And you know, he's simply got
(10:08):
to work hard and for the team to work hard
to get the cars faster. He just needs to be
closer to Max in pretty much all conditions. As Helmet
Marcos said, three tenths of a second, they'll allow him,
and that's that's about it. Okay, yesterday he was obviously
five tenths of the second, five sixpence of a second. Piney,
(10:30):
that's not an awful lot, is it. But the problem
is in these days of Formula one, you can go
from seventh to seventeenth in just five tenths of a second.
Half a second, not a lot. So he's he's just
got to get better and better. What he doesn't have
to do is what Oliver Behman did yesterday and the
throat thing in the wall that is, although they him
(10:51):
did kiss the wall in practice, just just a light touch,
just the notes there. So yeah, he's he's on a
trajectory and this is this is you know, like base
what do they call it, ever is based one or
something like that. That's what he worries out of the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That's a great filter to look at it through zooming
out of it. McLaren, Norris and Pastree, Ferrari, Leclair and
Hamilton as McLaren. The faster is that the faster car McLaren.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It has been proven to be the faster car over
a race distance at the moment. Leclaire and the Ferrari
have come up with a faster time as of yesterday,
and it may well be a faster car on that track.
The Ferrari does have a good record on that track.
There's no doubt about that, but I think it's all
going to sort out as we go along. I mean,
(11:45):
yesterday was a little bit screwed up. I think in times,
I don't think you're going to see the Times yesterday
or the order of the Times yesterday translated into qualifying today. Certainly,
Lucle it's going to be at the top Norris's Pastree
most likely, and you could have got to say probably
Hamilton's going to be there as well. But the rest
(12:07):
of it is all mixed up. Different fuels, different car engines,
different powers set ups, different power availability. All things will
be will be proven basically in the first qualifying of
the year. Essentially, we're still in the testing phase from
the Bahrain test, where each driver got about a day
day and a half, including Liam in the car. And
(12:28):
Liam's day was disrupted enormously by rain, so he hasn't
had time in the car. Not many of these drivers have.
And the really is the old saying the rubber hits
the road this afternoon in qualifying too.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Bob, thanks so much for your time. I always learned
plenty listening to you. Thanks for taking our call, and
enjoy the rest of the weekend. We'll catch up again,
so thank you, Bony, my pleasure, all the best mate,
Bobby Murray there gee he talks good scenes, doesn't he.
Like I said, I just always learned so much about
motor sport and about the intricacies of it from listening
(13:05):
to Bob McMurray.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Lack for more from Weekends Sport with Jason Fine. Listen
live to News Talk Set B Weekends from midday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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