Liam Lawson has identified pace as the main focus for Racing Bulls after the team endured a difficult weekend at the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Racing Bulls still collected six points through Arvid Lindblad's seventh-place finish, but Lawson believes the result was largely a product of opportunities rather than the team's underlying pace.
Racing Bulls struggled for performance throughout the Baku weekend. Lawson said the team lacked speed from the opening sessions through the race, while its cars were unable to match Alpine's performance. As a result, Lindblad's six-point finish did not necessarily reflect the team's competitive level over the weekend.
Lindblad was also involved in an incident during the first safety car restart. The Racing Bulls driver collided with Lawson at Turn 1 following an incident initiated by Franco Colapinto, who had already made contact with Pierre Gasly and Isack Hadjar. Lindblad apologised afterwards, but Lawson questioned his team-mate's approach into the opening corner.
"It was a tough weekend overall for the team. We've struggled. If everything were normal, we wouldn't have scored. It was a very standard race. We didn't have the speed of Alpine, so we just got very lucky," Lawson said.
Lawson stressed that the team's primary weakness was not confined to one particular phase of the race but was its overall pace throughout the weekend. With Malaysia and Singapore coming next, Racing Bulls has limited time to analyse its data and find improvements during the remainder of the triple-header.
"With pace all weekend. So that's something we'll work on over the rest of the triple-header," Lawson said.
Team principal Alan Permane agreed that Racing Bulls were fortunate to leave Baku with points. However, he noted that the car performed better during the race than it had across the earlier sessions.
"We were able to capitalise on the opportunities that presented themselves throughout the race, and to come away with six points for the team is a really positive outcome from a challenging weekend," Permane said.
Permane added that the Baku race provided additional data for the team to study ahead of the next two events. Racing Bulls must now understand why its performance was weaker than usual throughout the weekend while building on the improvement shown during the race itself.
"We had a tougher-than-usual weekend in terms of performance, but the cars certainly performed better in the race than they did across the rest of the weekend. It gives us another set of data to analyse and learn from as we look to understand where we can improve," Permane said.
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