Liam Lawson: I'm getting more comfortable driving the RB21

      On Thursday, of the Red Bull Racing drivers, only Liam Lawson worked at the Bahrain circuit, having completed 91 laps in a day, the best of which he overcame in 1:30.252. In the morning session, the New Zealand driver was 8th, and in the afternoon he climbed a line higher.

      Liam Lawson (7th): "I'm getting more comfortable driving this car, and overall we've been working on a pretty tight schedule today. We had to deal with several technical issues during the day, but this also happens in tests, because we are still just studying our new car.

      In addition, the weather affected the work on the track to some extent, and this did not affect our plans in the best way, but I believe that most teams found themselves in this situation.

      Everything we do in the tests is extremely valuable in terms of preparation for Melbourne, and it seems to us that things are progressing well. This is the most important part of the pre-season program, and today was the last time I drove a car before the Australian Grand Prix, so I had to do everything right.

      We will try to use the information we have received as effectively as possible in order to achieve a good balance of the car by the first race of the season."

      Pierre Vache, Technical Director: "We have decided that Liam will work full-time to continue his preparations for the season. Unfortunately, the weather was not good, it was raining at the beginning of the day, so we decided to simulate the race so that Liam could take up the pace on long laps.

      In addition, it was important for us to check the reliability of the car over the race distance. During the day, the task was to understand the behavior of the car on C3 tires and work with different settings.

      Overall, today we tried to better understand the features of the car, but in such weather conditions it was not easy to assess its speed and effectively warm up the tires. But Liam reacted correctly to what was happening and provided us with information very similar to what Max says about the car.

      We already have a good understanding of the RB21's character, and tomorrow, on the final day of testing, Verstappen will be driving the car."