Kiwi Liam Lawson has ended a frustrating day at the Qatar Grand Prix near the back of the field, as they line up at Lusail International Circuit on Monday morning (NZT).
After finishing 16th in the sprint race, Lawson could not survive the first stage of qualifying for the main event, clocking the 17th-fastest time — his worst result since taking over the Racing Bulls car from Aussie Daniel Ricciardo at Austen, Texas in October.
Afterwards, he complained that traffic had slowed his progress around the 5.4km circuit during the qualifying window.
"It's really small, but when the margins are hundredths of a second like they are," he reflected. "It's a little bit frustrating... it's multiple things.
"Everyone backed up before the last corner, so we sat rolling at idle for 20-odd seconds, and then turn one and turn two, the tyres weren't there. I couldn't even improve on the lap I did at the start of Q1, which has put us in our position.
"It's a shame."
Lawson admits making his way into the top 10 for championship points will be a tall order.
"It's going to be very tough," he said. "Obviously, we'll work as hard as we can to do that, but judging by today's race, it will be difficult."
Lawson was buoyant, after qualifying 10th for the sprint race over 19 laps, but immediately fell through the field at the start and was unable to recover.
"The first lap was a bit of a disaster," he said. "I don't really know why, but we had really low grip for the first part of the lap.
"That pretty much killed our race, but outside of that, we still need to find a lot of speed, because it wasn't like we came back through. We stayed where we fell back to, so it was frustrating."
The Kiwi is racing for a fulltime seat with Red Bull next year, but this latest performance has seen him lose ground to incumbent Sergio Perez, who qualified ninth, and RB teammate Yuki Tsunoda (14th).
Champion Max Verstappen, who clinched his fourth straight title last week at Las Vegas, grabbed pole position for the main race — his first since Austria in June.
The Dutchman had struggled to eighth in the sprint, but clocked the weekend's fastest time so far (1m 20.520s) to edge Brits George Russell and Lando Norris in Q3, after also heading Q2 (1m 20.687s).
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