Lawson turns Baku brawl into best-yet P5 as Tsunoda can’t break the tow
Liam Lawson didn’t so much survive Baku as he solved it.
On a day when the slipstream can make heroes and victims in the space of a straight, the Racing Bulls driver converted a second-row start into a career-best fifth place, muscling past Yuki Tsunoda after the pit cycle and then holding a shark tank of faster cars at bay to the flag.
The flashpoint came just after Tsunoda’s stop. The Red Bull rejoined on fresh mediums and looked primed to pounce, but Lawson, with heat in his tyres, sent it into Turn 3 and snatched the place straight back. From there, it was a test of nerve and battery management. Tsunoda, Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton all loomed within DRS, all waiting for a mistake. None came.
“I was preparing for him to end up catching me quicker,” Lawson admitted. “He’s on a fresh set of tyres, on a medium, on a grippier tyre and, honestly, I expected them to be faster. Looking at Max today, they had a great race and the car looks good.”
The New Zealander’s answer was in the margins. Racing Bulls trimmed the car for a punchy final sector, and Lawson leaned on it. “Our sector three was extremely strong this weekend, it’s where it needed to be,” he said.
There was also a lesson learned mid-race. Early on, Kimi Antonelli got the jump when Lawson ran out of deployment at exactly the wrong moment. “To that mistake with Kimi, I made sure that I never ran out of energy again,” Lawson said, smiling at his own ruthlessness. After that, every time the pack queued up down the main straight, Lawson had enough juice to defend — just.
For Tsunoda, promoted to Red Bull earlier this season, the what-if was measured in metres, not seconds. “In the second stint, unfortunately, if I was able to rejoin two metres faster, probably I would have been able to keep Liam behind,” he said. As it was, he settled for his best result since stepping up, and a quiet nod to the work behind the scenes. “The team did a fantastic job with the strategy. Something I’m able to improve into this race week, especially long run, was massive, and also something internally got supported by the team to make these changes to the car, which affected a lot [of the] long run today. So yeah, it was just good.”
This was a different kind of statement from Lawson. Qualifying pace has never been his problem; converting it amid the relentless chess of Baku’s 2.2 km flat-out blast is. On Sunday he stitched it together: opportunistic when it mattered, disciplined when it counted, and just cynical enough when he needed to be.
It’s never comfortable with faster machinery looming in your mirrors, but for lap after lap Lawson kept Tsunoda’s Red Bull in the dirty air and out of reach. Norris and Hamilton were stuck watching the same blue-and-white rear wing as the laps ticked down. In a race defined by tyre offsets and timing, Lawson found clear air in the most crowded place on the calendar.
Tsunoda will kick himself for the pit-exit miscue — two metres in Baku can be a chasm — but he leaves with confirmation that his long-run pace is trending up. Lawson takes more than points. He takes credibility, the kind earned when your mirrors are full of champions and you still get to the flag first among them.
No theatrics, no radio drama, just a quietly ruthless afternoon from a driver who’s starting to look very comfortable at this level. In Baku, that’s saying something.
