– When talking about the positive surprises of the first half of the season, you can’t avoid the Racing Bulls. Although the four top teams are again the driving force under the new regulations, so the balance of power hasn’t changed much, right behind them comes Red Bull’s B-team.
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The racing team has been able to score 66 points so far this season and is currently in fifth place in the constructors’ championship. Although Alpine started the season a bit better again, the French team has stagnated for several races and was overtaken by the young bulls, who scored points with both cars five times in the last six races.
This is partly due to a solid debut by Arvid Lindblad, but also to a significant improvement by Liam Lawson, who has already scored 43 points and thus leads the midfield – he is “only” 25 points behind Isack Hadjar in the second Red Bull.
“Very, very strong,” the New Zealander assesses the first half of the season from the team’s perspective. “We really scored points consistently.” Indeed: only in Miami did the Racing Bulls fail to score points; otherwise, there were always at least two.
Development stronger than ever
What Lawson especially wants to highlight is the development the team has undertaken, which according to him has been stronger than ever. “So far, I think everything we’ve brought has worked very, very well,” he praises. “And that’s something that’s hard in Formula 1.”
“When the parts start to work, you move in a pretty good direction,” says Lawson. “But you see teams that develop something and then bring parts to the race that don’t work as expected. Then you have to kind of take three steps back to almost find your way again.”
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“And I think that’s something we didn’t have to do this year. Everything we did worked very well.”
In addition, Racing Bulls has also been “very strong” this year in optimizing the existing package every weekend. “I think we start much closer to our qualifying setups and have a fairly aggressive car. But for us, it was easy to drive. So yes, I was very, very satisfied with that.”
Not only Dan Fallows in focus
An important building block could be Dan Fallows in the future. The former chief engineer of Red Bull rejoined the Bulls after a short stint at Aston Martin – this time in the smaller team. Although he had no influence on the current car since he only joined in April, he has since been able to provide input as technical director and set the direction.
Lawson does not want to attribute the upward trend to one person, as many employees are working in the background. “I think it’s just something where the team in the background, especially in the factory, has done a very, very good job.”
“It’s really the development side that has been very, very strong. Mainly what has happened in aero development. Also the wind tunnel time that the team has used. I think all of that was maximized and was simply better this year than in previous years,” he praises.
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