Lawson in ‘positive place’ after pre-season testing despite Red Bull’s ‘teething gremlins’ with RB21

New Red Bull driver Liam Lawson has shared his “positive” first impressions of life at the team – and aboard their RB21 challenger – after completing his allocated pre-season running in Bahrain.

Lawson stepped up from Red Bull’s sister team, Racing Bulls, over the winter, replacing the struggling Sergio Perez as reigning World Champion Max Verstappen’s team mate.

With just three days of pre-season testing available to the drivers, Lawson got a morning session under his belt on Wednesday before working through back-to-back sessions on Thursday.

While some issues kept Lawson in the garage on several occasions, and light showers made for a slippery track at times, the New Zealander has been encouraged by his stints at the wheel so far.

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - FEBRUARY 27: Liam Lawson of New Zealand driving the (30) Oracle Red Bull Racing — Lawson drove the RB21 during both the morning and afternoon sessions on Thursday in Bahrain

“I am getting more comfortable in the car,” said Lawson, who completed 91 laps on Day 2 and posted a best time of 1m 30.252s to place seventh on the timesheets.

“It has been a busy day overall. As part of testing, we were fighting a few teething gremlins with the car through the day. It’s all about just learning about the new car.

AS IT HAPPENED: All the action from Day 2 of 2025 pre-season testing in Bahrain

“A few of our runs were cut short a little bit and we had to deal with the weather too, which wasn’t great timing for our run plan, as I imagine was the case for most of the pit lane.

“All this work is extremely valuable going into Melbourne and we feel in a positive place. This is all the most important stuff when it comes to pre-season.

“This will be the last time I drive the car before Melbourne, to get things right, and we are going to take [things away] from all of it to put together the best-balanced car for the first race.”

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Red Bull’s Technical Director, Pierre Wache, added some more background on Lawson’s run plan, while praising him for “responding well” and providing comments “very close” to Verstappen’s.

“Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great, with some rain at the beginning of the day, so we decided to do a race simulation to get Liam up to speed with long runs and to check the car for general reliability across race distance,” said Wache.

“In the afternoon, our aim was to understand the car with the C3 [tyre] compound and the set-up options and to also explore the set-up of the car in general.

“We had wanted to get a total insight into the car today, and understand its full direction, but it was also difficult to judge the performance of the car in these conditions and get a lot of the temperature on the tyres.

“But Liam responded well today and his feedback was very close to Max’s. We have good understandings to take into the final day of testing now, with Max at the wheel.”