Liam Lawson admits he shouldn't be running off track after brutal Australia Q1 exit

New Red Bull Formula 1 driver Liam Lawson has admitted that he shouldn’t be making mistakes in such a crucial part of a race weekend after getting eliminated in Q1 for the Australian Grand Prix.

While four-time world champion Max Verstappen qualified a strong third at Albert Park Circuit on Saturday, new teammate Lawson struggled to 18th on his maiden appearance with Red Bull, only beating the two Haas cars of Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman.

The 23-year-old was set to improve his time with two minutes left on the clock, but he ran wide at Turn 15 and had to abort the lap.

While Lawson feels that his preparations for qualifying were less than ideal, not helped by missing third practice entirely due to engine woes, he feels he only has himself to blame for the mistake that cost him a shot at getting into Q2.

“We expected the start of qualifying to be tough,” the Kiwi told Sky. “To be honest, the first laps were expected to be off and then we were just planning on building through the session.

“But obviously going off the second lap put everything out of the order a bit.

“The last lap was good until the last sector, where I had a big drop. Obviously missing P3 obviously doesn't help any of us, but I shouldn't be going off in quali.”

Lawson posted a best time of 1m17.094s in qualifying, missing out on a Q2 berth by just under six tenths of a second.

Prior to his late off, he also had a major moment at the tricky Turn 9/10 section on his final flying lap.

“Before Turn 9, we were about half a second up,” he revealed. “Then obviously we would have just kept improving.

“I really had a snap through 9 and 10, I think the tyres were really starting to drop there. This is something that we have just been battling this weekend and obviously something we missed practicing in P3.”

With overtaking relatively difficult around the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne, Lawson is pinning his hopes on wet-weather conditions to salvage a weekend that has proven to be a baptism of fire so far.

“I haven't really done much high fuel running, so we felt like we had to stick with the car today, regardless of this,” he said.

“Obviously Max is in a good position so we definitely made a step and obviously the weather tomorrow is variable so let's see.”