DOHA (Reuters) – New Zealander Liam Lawson will stand in for AlphaTauri’s recovering Australian Daniel Ricciardo for the fifth straight race at this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix.
The 21-year-old made his Formula One race debut at the Dutch Grand Prix in August after Ricciardo crashed and broke his hand in practice.
He scored his first points when he finished ninth in Singapore, his third race, last month.
Qatar is a sprint weekend, with a 100km race on Saturday ahead of the main grand prix on Sunday night and points to be scored in both.
“We still have more to learn about our new package, and I’m not so sure that Qatar is the type of circuit that will suit our car,” Lawson said in a team preview.
“Learning takes time, and we’ve got more opportunities in Qatar to try and get the most out of it. However, it’s also a Sprint weekend, so at the same time, that makes it quite tricky, especially in my situation.
“I’ve never driven here, so going into the sprint weekend will be extra tough.”
Lawson drove the track on the simulator last week and expected an exciting but tough weekend.
“With only one free practice session, we drivers will have to know where to improve because it’ll get faster at night when it’s much cooler, and we need to know exactly how to extract everything out of the car,” he said.
“I’m expecting it to be tougher than the races we’ve just done.”
The New Zealander will revert to a reserve role next season, with Ricciardo and Japan’s Yuki Tsunoda confirmed for next season.
Lawson, who is also competing in Japan’s Super Formula series with the final round clashing with the Mexican Grand Prix, said his goal now was to make sure he secured an F1 seat in future.
“Right now, I’ve still got this opportunity to keep trying to show something, and I’ll try to make the most of it,” he said.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Christian Radnedge)
