Lawson brushes the wall, but Racing Bulls show a real turn of speed under the lights
Liam Lawson’s Friday night in Singapore ended with a thump against Turn 17 — and a front-right corner torn off for good measure — yet the bigger story from FP2 was that Racing Bulls have a genuinely lively car around Marina Bay.
The New Zealander’s session was cut short after a kerb-hopping moment went a step too far. He attacked Turn 16, bounced across to the left, then took another hefty bite of Turn 17 and tried to carry the speed. The rear stepped, the wall didn’t blink, and the red flags came out as sparks lit up the floodlights. It looked costly, and it was, but the pace before that was exactly what the team wanted to see.
“We were quick,” Lawson said, calling it a shame to end in the barriers. He’d rolled back some FP1 setup experiments that hadn’t landed, found a more comfortable window, and felt the car come to him in FP2 right up until the kiss-of-death with the concrete. “Short-run pace looks good,” he added, albeit with the caveat everyone in the paddock was using: you never quite know what programs the others are running on a street Friday.
That uncertainty cuts both ways for Racing Bulls because, on the other side of the garage, Isack Hadjar put a proper marker down. The Frenchman wound up second quickest in the session, just 0.132s off the ultimate time set by Oscar Piastri. Whatever the fuel loads and engine modes, a P2 on a track as fiddly as Marina Bay is a mood-changer for any midfield outfit, and it tracks with what Lawson felt before his evening ended early.
Singapore is brutal when you get greedy. Grip comes in waves as the surface rubbers up, and the kerbs here don’t just sit and wait — they pitch back if you cross them wrong, especially in that late-lap complex around 16 and 17. Lawson owned the mistake and kept the mood upbeat, but it leaves the crew with an overtime repair shift and the driver with a note-to-self about how much curb aggression this VCARB 02 will actually swallow.
Inside the garage, you could sense a quiet confidence. The car rotated sharply in the medium-speed stuff and rode the bumps better than earlier in the day; that FP1-to-FP2 swing matters here, where track evolution can flatter or embarrass a setup in the space of an hour. Racing Bulls say they know where the gains came from, and Lawson sounded convinced there’s more to unlock overnight with some fine tuning.
“We’re happy with where the car’s at,” he said, while stressing the team will keep chasing it because the field is “very, very close.” Which it is. Street Fridays are a mirage at the best of times, but the timing sheets still tell you something: Hadjar’s lap wasn’t a fluke, and Lawson’s first sectors before the crash backed that up.
The team will hope the shunt doesn’t force any compromises on the plan. Singapore qualifying always rewards confidence on entry and a car you can lean on over the kerbs as the track tightens up. Lawson had that feel before the incident; now the trick is to reset, reconnect, and not leave another tenth in the wall while he’s at it.
As for targets, Racing Bulls won’t say it out loud, but Q3 has to be on the table if the trend holds. Hadjar’s headline time puts a spotlight on the package; Lawson’s task is simply to give himself a clean run at it. Cut out the overstep, keep the detail work from FP2, and this could be one of those Saturdays where the blue car with the snorting bull punches above its weight.
Street circuits are unforgiving storytellers. Lawson’s Friday reads like a classic: promise, edge, consequence. If the ending on Saturday is different, Racing Bulls may look back on that cracked rim and missing tyre as the moment they learned exactly how fast they could be.
