Pirelli has denied Max Verstappen’s claim that Formula 1 could have prevented the tyre concerns it faced in Qatar by ensuring other series raced at the circuit beforehand.

Qatar returned to the F1 calendar this year – commencing a 10-year deal – but the event was partially dominated by discussions surrounding unexpected tyre problems.

After Pirelli discovered micro cuts on its tyres following Friday’s running, the FIA reduced the track width by 80cm at Turns 12-13 to discourage drivers from running wide.

It’s suspected that the 50mm pyramid kerbs on the outer extremities of the track at certain corners were responsible for the spate of tyre problems encountered.

Amid continued safety concerns, the FIA then announced ahead of Sunday’s grand prix that it would be enforcing maximum stint lengths of 18 laps for every competitor.

Verstappen, who wants to avoid a repeat of mandatory pit stops, asserted that F1 looked “silly” by being the first series to run at the newly resurfaced Lusail International Circuit.

However, Pirelli’s Head of Car Racing and F1 Mario Isola retorts that other categories wouldn’t have necessarily been able to uncover the problems F1 experienced.

“Each championship is different,” Isola issued via Autosport. “For example, in the past, we had a few issues with GT cars, because they were cutting corners a lot more than F1.

“Maybe you could organise an international GT event, but then you don’t find the same issue.

“So, I’m not sure that organising an international event is the way to fix the issue.

“I prefer to rely on simulation and see what the output of the simulation is. It is not perfect, but I believe that we have tools that are quite accurate.

“So, if we combine the simulation, with indoor testing and working together with other experts in other areas, I’m sure that we can find solutions.”

It was announced last week that Pirelli had agreed a deal with F1 to remain the sport’s sole tyre supplier through 2027.

The Italian manufacturer fended off competition from Bridgestone to win the latest tyre tender process, also securing an additional one-year option to extend.

F1 team bosses had collectively lobbied for Pirelli to remain ahead of the final decision being made, insisting there were “many millions of reasons” to continue.

The FIA has announced it will revisit the incident that involved Lewis Hamilton crossing a live race track in last weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix.

The two Mercedes drivers tangled at Turn 1 in Sunday’s race, resulting in Hamilton being stranded in the gravel and retiring on the spot.

Although the stewards determined that neither driver was at fault for the incident, they did take action regarding Hamilton crossing the track while the race was ongoing.

“After crashing out of the race in Lap 1, the driver of Car 44 abandoned his car in the gravel and ran back to the pits,” the stewards’ verdict read.

“He thereby crossed the track that was live at this time and reached the inside edge of the track just seconds before Car 63 arrived at high speed after exiting the pits. He then continued to walk alongside the track until finally exiting the track.

Hamilton was subsequently handed a reprimand and fined a total of €50,000, €25,000 of which is suspended for the remainder of the 2023 Formula 1 season.

However, the FIA has announced it plans to review whether incidents of a similar nature should warrant a harsher penalty amid concerns over the impact on upcoming racers.

“The FIA is revisiting the incident in which Lewis Hamilton crossed a live track during the Qatar Grand Prix,” the FIA noted in a statement.

“The FIA notes that Lewis was apologetic during the subsequent stewards hearing in to the incident and acknowledged that the crossing was a serious safety breach. However, in view of his role model status, the FIA is concerned about the impression his actions may have created on younger drivers.”

The Qatar Grand Prix saw Lance Stroll’s building frustration come to a head as Aston Martin’s encouraging 2023 Formula 1 season continued to unravel – but did the most recent race weekend further exemplify that the team’s potential will most be capped by its struggling driver’s presence?

Aston Martin began the latest campaign as the revitalised force in F1. With a massively revised car and the addition of two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso, things were looking rosy as the team swiftly established itself as the closest competitor to the runaway Red Bulls at the front.

After successive placings of seventh in the Constructors’ Championship since morphing into Aston Martin back in 2021, the British marque appeared to finally be delivering on the promise it had consistently talked up but failed to showcase on a consistent basis.

But since Alonso climbed atop the rostrum in Montreal for the sixth time in only eight rounds, he has only added a solitary top-three finish across the previous nine races.

Consequently, the Spaniard has surrendered third place in the standings to ex-McLaren nemesis Lewis Hamilton, while Aston Martin have rapidly slipped behind both Mercedes and Ferrari in the teams’ championship.

Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack has attributed its sudden regression to unexpected “side effects” from the raft of upgrades the side bolted onto the AMR23 in Canada. Despite the entire operation undertaking “crazy hours” to recover the lost ground, Aston Martin has thus far been unable to rediscover its early-season momentum, dropping into the clutches of a resurgent McLaren side on the track.

The 2023 season has been a tale of two halves for Aston Martin and McLaren. The Woking camp entered the year braced to be on the back foot after missing development targets with its MCL60 car, but an upgraded car in Austria has transcended the team into a consistent fixture at the sharp end.

Despite starting out of position due to deleted lap times for exceeding track limits in qualifying, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris recovered a cumulative 11 places in Sunday’s Qatar GP to ensure McLaren scored consecutive double podiums for the first time in over a decade. Add Piastri’s Sprint victory from Saturday to the mix and McLaren outscored Aston Martin handsomely again at the Lusail circuit.

Heading into the weekend, Alonso reluctantly said Aston Martin would have to “accept” that McLaren would usurp them. 

It now appears a formality it will happen as early as the next round in Austin, United States based on the rate McLaren have slashed the deficit in recent weeks. Having been a resounding 137 points ahead of its Mercedes-powered counterpart after the British Grand Prix in July, Aston Martin now only reside 11 points clear of McLaren with five rounds remaining this season.

Alonso’s costly trip through the gravel, dropping him behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to sixth, didn’t aid Aston Martin’s cause last Sunday – but he has been the least of the team’s problems. Amid Aston Martin’s plight down the pecking order, the Oviedo-born racer has been as dogged as ever, continuously extracting every last ounce of performance out of the car beneath him.

After Carlos Sainz’s early exit last weekend, Alonso remains the only driver to have progressed to Q3 in every qualifying and has scored points in all 17 rounds bar one. That relentless consistency synonymous with the unabating Spaniard has enabled him to retain fourth place, ahead of both Ferrari drivers and Mercedes’ George Russell.

Contrastingly, though, Stroll lies a colossal 136 points adrift of his team-mate and even on the brink of being displaced from the top 10 by the two Alpine drivers directly behind.

Stroll was eliminated from the first segment of qualifying for the fourth time in succession in Qatar, resulting in a meltdown that saw him throw his steering wheel away, shove trainer Henry Howe and then deliver a curt seven-word interview including a four-letter expletive. Those actions, which landed him a warning from the FIA, show his wretched run has begun to take its toll.

The unique situation of having his father outright own the team means Stroll’s seat is under virtually no pressure. However, this season has exposed the conundrum facing Lawrence Stroll in prioritising whether he is purely involved in F1 to see his son succeed or to see the Aston Martin brand thrive.

A cloned Alonso would currently have Aston Martin second in the Constructors’ Championship, with an extremely comfortable 40-point buffer to Mercedes. Of course, that is a simplistic view to take and there aren’t many drivers who could stack up to Alonso’s elite level. Nevertheless, the huge disparity between Aston Martin’s two competitors is among the biggest on the grid – and is a glaring weakness that rival teams have been able to gracefully capitalise on.

To be fair, Stroll can count himself somewhat unfortunate. The 24-year-old missed the entirety of pre-season testing after a cycling accident had left him with two broken wrists. That meant he was still finding his feet when Aston Martin’s 2023 charger was operating at its best and a run of bad results as the car’s competitiveness tailed away led to his confidence plummeting to rock bottom.

The Canadian has also occasionally been unlucky with circumstances aligning against him in races and small margins adding up to exaggerate his overall deficit to Alonso.

For example, Stroll only clocked a time at Suzuka a few tenths shy of Alonso. But while the former exited in Q1, the latter advanced through to Q3 and then bagged points. Aside from Red Bull and Verstappen cantering away, the field spread being so compact this year means disaster has never been too far off, especially for an individual like Stroll who has never been an exceptional qualifier.

However, moments like Japan have been the exception rather than the rule between the two. Far too often Stroll has languished miles behind Alonso on the timing sheets, most recently in Qatar when he wound up over nine-tenths shy of his illustrious partner in both the weekend’s qualifying sessions.

The ex-Williams racer has also been responsible for several avoidable errors, most recently exceeding track limits too frequently during the Qatar GP, dropping him from ninth to outside the points in 11th.

“I’m just struggling with the car and just getting to grips with the balance,” Stroll explained last weekend. “I’m just not able to extract performance from it right now, which is just difficult and frustrating. There’s high levels of understeer, snap oversteer, [and] a lack of grip.

“I feel like I can’t really lean on the car and drive it with confidence without dealing with snaps and understeer and just a balance that I really don’t particularly enjoy driving.”

Stroll claims the last time he felt comfortable inside the AMR23 was in Austria. Incidentally, that was the last time he edged Alonso in a competitive session. But his assertion does uphold an element of truth.

Alonso has arguably the largest operating window of any F1 driver in history. He inherently prefers understeer but is capable of conquering any behavioural challenges a car provides, which can often disguise deficiencies that drivers of a lesser calibre, like Stroll, get entangled trying to overcome.

As Stroll alludes to, that situation has unfolded at Aston Martin, placing him in a rut that, to this point, he hasn’t escaped.

“I think he has a particular driving style,” he added. “The way that he gets around the corners might be very different to mine.

“At the beginning of the year I think the car was giving a bigger window for different driving styles to work. And right now it has a lot of limitations that I don’t like that I think he kind of drives around and deals with and that doesn’t bother him as much.”

“I know we’ve changed the car a lot throughout the year and the characteristic of the car has changed a lot throughout the year,” he continued. “So maybe we moved away from something that suited me better at the beginning of the year.”

But while Aston Martin’s wayward car development has denied it any shot at placing second, it’s predominantly been Stroll’s lacklustre performance that is likely to cost the team even a top-four finish now.

Alonso extraordinarily highlighted at the start of the year that Stroll possessed World Champion potential, something he looks a million miles shy of at this moment in time.

Stroll can certainly point to the injury derailing his 2023 campaign from the outset – but, ultimately, he is in his seventh year in the top flight. There has been enough evidence to document his limitations as a driver and understand fundamentally how strong he is compared to the current crop.

As it stands, that level is nowhere near convincing enough for a side with championship aspirations, even in a secondary role alongside an established seasoned performer like Alonso.

With Aston Martin continuing to press on with moving into its new state-of-the-art headquarters at Silverstone, the British outfit could be poised to take a hard stance on Stroll’s seemingly untouchable status within the team if it wishes to transpire its current hopes of title success into a reality later on.

Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack has revealed the burning seat Fernando Alonso encountered during the Qatar Grand Prix is a repeat issue it’s “working” on.

Alonso radioed in during the opening stages of the race to inform the team that there was a burning sensation on the seat beneath him.

“The seat is burning, mate. Anything we can do at the pit stop? Throw me water or something,” Alonso queried.

However, the team were unable to act, with Alonso revealing on Sunday evening that the regulations didn’t allow for the mechanics to intervene to soothe his troubles.

Later on, Krack disclosed that Alonso had previously complained about the problem, which was worsened by the extreme conditions present at the Lusail circuit.

Asked if such a situation had materialised previously, Krack said: “Yes, it’s true. He reported on it already a couple of times.

“We were working on it. And it’s not that we have not done anything. We had it also in Singapore, which we thought was much, much better.

“But then obviously, we have another set of extreme conditions, so I think we’re not far from air conditioning if it continues like that.”

Pressed to explain why the AMR23 is encountering such an issue, Krack replied: “You have hydraulic lines, you have ECUs around you. They’re all heating up, and you try to isolate the seat from it.

“But also, you do not want to have any kind of active cooling because it’s just weight.”

Alonso believes the concern on the right-hand side of the seat was not exclusive to his car, hinting that team-mate Lance Stroll was also managing the minor hitch.

“I think for Lance and myself we struggled a little bit with temperature in the seat on the right-hand side,” Alonso elucidated.

“I got a burn in the first 15 laps, so I even asked on the radio if they could throw me some water or something at the pitstop, which apparently is not allowed. So yeah, it was quite extreme.

“We have been dealing with some issues. Today was extreme.”

Alonso battled through his concerns to eventually finish sixth, despite a brief off-track excursion at Turn 2 costing him a position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

However, Stroll’s torrid run continued as a time penalty for a track limits infringement dropped him from ninth down to 11th.

McLaren’s second consecutive double podium, meanwhile, enabled it to close to within 11 points of Aston Martin in the battle for fourth in the Constructors’ standings.

Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll has been issued a written warning for his conduct at last weekend’s Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix.

The FIA revealed earlier in the week that its Compliance Officer was in discussion with Stroll over incidents that took place at Lusail.

It is understood that it related to his conduct after being eliminated from qualifying, when he appeared to have an altercation with his Performance Coach.

On Friday the governing body outlined that Stroll has communicated his regret over the situation and the matter is now considered closed.

“The FIA Compliance Officer received an apology from Lance Stroll regarding his actions during the 2023 FIA Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix,” read a brief statement.

“The Compliance Officer has noted this apology and issued a written warning, reminding Lance of his responsibilities as a competitor bound by the FIA Code of Ethics and other FIA ethical and conduct guidelines set forth by the sporting regulations.

“The FIA maintains a zero-tolerance stance against misconduct and condemns any actions that may lead to physical harassment.”

Stroll has endured a tough run of grands prix as Aston Martin’s performance has regressed.

Stroll has not scored a single point since Formula 1 returned from its summer break, a run which also included a sizeable accident in qualifying in Singapore, which ruled him out of the race.

Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner asserts that Daniel Ricciardo was “right” to miss last weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix amid the “testing” conditions the drivers encountered.

After being dropped by McLaren at the end of last year, Ricciardo returned to a full-time Formula 1 drive midway through this year with Red Bull’s sister side, AlphaTauri.

However, the eight-time race winner has been absent from action since sustaining a break to his left hand in a crash during the Dutch Grand Prix weekend in August.

While Ricciardo embarked upon a simulator session following the Japanese Grand Prix, he elected to delay his comeback further by missing the most recent round in Qatar.

With several drivers proceeding to struggle with the extreme humidity present on Sunday at the Lusail circuit, Horner believes Ricciardo made the correct choice.

“We want to see him in full fitness,” Horner said. “I think it was right to miss the race, particularly as it turned out with the conditions that we had, it could have been very testing for him.

“So I think to have had that extra, if you like, 12 days, in the run-up to Austin is the best preparation for him.

“With Austin, it’s obviously going to be difficult for him to jump straight back into a sprint race weekend but I’m sure he’ll be physically in good shape to take that on.”

It was confirmed ahead of the Japanese GP that Ricciardo will retain his drive with AlphaTauri alongside Yuki Tsunoda for 2024.

Therefore, Horner adds that there was no rush for Ricciardo to get back behind the wheel and risk aggravating his injury.

The long-serving Red Bull chief also lavished praise on the deputing Liam Lawson, who predominantly excelled in his quintet of stand-in appearances for Ricciardo.

“Of course, he [Ricciardo] wanted to come back,” Horner admitted. But he has a contract secured for next year.

“In Liam, we’ve such a great sub, and it was also a good way of giving him another grand prix without putting unnecessary pressure on Dan and potentially causing longer-term damage. It allowed us to say ‘Look, don’t overstretch it’.”

Ricciardo has already conceded that his return to the Red Bull fray has come with the intention of earning back the seat he vacated with the senior team at the end of 2018.

The current incumbent of that position, Sergio Perez, has hit the headlines for the wrong reasons once more this season amid another disastrous showing in Qatar.

Perez failed to progress to Q3 in qualifying for the eighth time this season before inheriting three time penalties for track limit infringements, relegating him to 10th place.

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has ramped up the pressure even more on the Mexican, telling Austrian outlet oe24 that he might need a “change of climate and team”.

“You must not forget: I brought Perez into the team back then,” Marko declared. “But that’s simply the fate with Verstappen that he’s suffering now. That was already the case with [Pierre] Gasly.

“From that point of view, Perez needs a change of climate and team. Now we’ll see how the next two races go. But the team and he are aware that he is in a crisis.”

McLaren have been left encouraged by its assertion that Max Verstappen “didn’t have so much in hand” compared to past races in 2023 in Sunday’s Qatar Grand Prix.

Although its two cars started out of position due to deleted lap times in qualifying, both drivers recovered to ensure McLaren achieved a successive double podium finish.

Oscar Piastri, who beat Verstappen to the Sprint victory, ended up only 4.8s adrift of the Dutchman, who led every lap from pole position en route to his 14th win of 2023.

But McLaren team boss Andrea Stella concedes that its pace versus Red Bull was “flattered” by the FIA imposing mandatory 18-lap stints to alleviate tyre concerns.

Verstappen pitted later than both McLarens during each stint amid Red Bull’s attempts to preserve its race-leading position against the potential intervention of a Safety Car.

“Well, I think, first of all, the [Red Bull] strategy is a little suboptimal from a racing time point of view,” Stella said. “But you do it because it’s the safest strategy.

“When you have the margin, you know, you do that because it protects you, for instance, from a late Safety Car. So there’s a flattering element in the fact that they were on a strategy that loses time.”

“Secondly, I’m not sure how much they were pushing,” he added.

Nevertheless, Stella believes Verstappen had less lap time in reserve than usual in Qatar, rueing that his cars didn’t start nearer the sharp end to apply pressure.

“I was certainly this time more than ever perceiving that maybe Max didn’t have, you know, so much in hand like he might have had other times, and it would have been good to just be there with him at the start, then put him under a little bit of pressure.

“Please don’t feel that in what I’m saying. We are now there to win. We are very, very realistic that there’s still work to do.

“But once you start that in the first position, then it can become tactical sometime, you know, and you can gain a position at the start and you can defend you may have two cars and so you are conditioned to do something.”

Stella also contends that the high-speed Lusail International Circuit heavily favoured McLaren’s car, adding that Mercedes would have been a greater threat without its two cars colliding at Turn 1 on the first lap.

Despite being rooted to the foot of the order, George Russell climbed his way through the field to take fourth on a four-stop strategy.

“I think also that this track is a very suitable track for our car,” he acknowledged. “So I wouldn’t expect for the coming races that this is necessarily not only the pecking order but also the level of competitiveness.”

“And at final point, Mercedes weren’t far at all today like George was very strong in terms of race pace and it’s a pity for them that they, you know, lost all the time at the start and that that’s an unfortunate situation otherwise they would have been there with us I think.”

But Stella still echoed the comments of Norris, who highlighted that McLaren’s tyre degradation proved to be quite competitive during Sunday’s 57-lap encounter.

“We were actually quite happy with the degradation of the tyres when we needed to push at the end of a stint we still had the pace to do that,” he added. “Lando’s pace at the end of the first stint was very strong, allowed him to gain positions.

“I think it would have been possibly a two-stop just because at some stage the tyre might have run out of rubber, but the pace I think it would have been good for a longer stint. So certainly you wouldn’t have done three stops today [without the mandatory stint lengths].”

Max Verstappen asserts that Formula 1 appeared “silly” by being the first series to trial the new track surface at the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar last weekend.

After hosting the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix in 2021, the Lusail track returned to the F1 calendar this season to commence a long-term 10-year agreement the circuit promoters penned with Liberty Media.

Ahead of the event’s continuation, the venue underwent extensive renovations, including the addition of a newly relayed track surface for the first time since it was opened in 2004.

However, F1 was the first series to encounter the updated surface, prompting the drivers to struggle for grip from the outset on Friday.

Unlike many other grands prix on the F1 roster, there was also no support series present throughout the entire race weekend.

Verstappen believes the sport should ensure that preventative measures are put in place to avoid a repeat of the situation occurring.

“I think it did grip up a little bit [during the race],” he said. “Probably if we come back next year it will be again a bit better but it depends on how much it will be driven.

“I think it’s important that other kinds of categories come back, or come here and race a little bit more, because you have to take, a bit, that oil out of the tarmac when it’s new, and also a bit more like a wider grip line. At the moment, I think it’s still too much like one line.

“But it seemed to really ramp up. I think next time that we get into a situation like this, I don’t think F1 should be, like, the first one to drive because it looks a bit silly.

“And, like, FP1 with cars, you know, sliding around having no grip, I think is important when we go to a track where they’ve put new tarmac, that at least it’s run in a little, y’know? That will then help a lot.”

The Dutchman, who was crowned a three-time champion on Saturday, insists that the dusty track was also partly responsible for mandated tyre stints being imposed.

Amid concerns about the tyres, the FIA enforced maximum stint lengths of 18 laps for every competitor in Sunday’s race.

“Also, for understanding the tyres, for example, what we had now,” Verstappen continued. “That’s why we had these forced, of course, limited laps.

“So yeah, a few things I think to learn out of this this weekend as a whole.”

Mercedes predicted that George Russell would only be able to score minor points in the Qatar Grand Prix after his opening lap clash with team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Having qualified second and third, Mercedes were aiming to apply pressure on polesitter and eventual race winner Max Verstappen.

However, Hamilton’s attempt to swing around the outside of the top two into Turn 1 saw Russell get sandwiched, resulting in contact between the two Mercedes cars.

Hamilton was pitched into a race-ending spin, while Russell continued at the back of the field, albeit requiring an immediate pit stop to replace his damaged front wing.

With the FIA mandating maximum 18-lap stint lengths amid tyre concerns, Russell eventually utilised an ambitious four-stop strategy to recover all the way back to fourth.

Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin admits that the team had only initially anticipated the Briton hauling himself into the lower reaches of the top 10.

“Given that we were put right to the back after that lap one incident, the early predictions were coming in back of the points but not scoring many points,” Shovlin explained on Mercedes’ race debrief video.

“As the race went on those predictions got better and better and ultimately were indicating that he would finish fourth place.”

Expanding on Russell’s comeback drive, Shovlin asserts that the 25-year-old was able to defy Mercedes’ expectations by negotiating the traffic effectively.

“Basically, he was able to overtake, he was able to get through key cars early on,” he highlighted.

“Also, once he got into free air, we could see that the race pace was actually really good and that was the thing that allowed him to make up so many places.

“On top of that, the strategy team did a great job of re-optimising the race, trying to make the most of a bad situation, and fourth was a great reward for their efforts.”

The collision between the two Mercedes cars stemmed from the duo starting on alternative tyres. While Russell matched Verstappen’s choice of the Medium, Hamilton was fitted with the Soft.

Although Shovlin echoed the drivers’ statements by revealing there were pre-race discussions held, he underlines that team orders were not imposed at any stage.

“We discussed the start tyre choice with both drivers on Sunday morning, and there was always going to be a chance that Lewis on the soft tyre was gonna get a better start and overtake George before Turn 1,” Shovlin conceded.

“That was always considered. But they were aware they were on different strategies, it was important that they didn’t lose time racing each other and that was clear.

“But, we weren’t imposing team orders in the race and what happened at Turn 1 was simply a mistake.”

Shovlin explains that Hamilton started on the Soft compound because he was more limited on stint life than Russell, particularly regarding the optimal Medium tyre.

“The Medium that he was gonna have to run was so short on life, it was actually very similar in range to the soft,” he noted.

“We elected Lewis to start on the Soft because of that better grip off the line, and the fact that it was unlikely to be any downsides in terms of range.”

Liam Lawson rued the race-ending mistake he made in the Qatar Grand Prix Sprint amid what was likely his last race appearance this year.

Lawson has deputised for Daniel Ricciardo in the AlphaTauri AT04 since the Australian sustained a broken left hand in an FP3 crash at Zandvoort at the end of August.

The New Zealander had excelled in his first four outings, peaking with a ninth-place finish in Singapore to secure AlphaTauri’s best result of the season to date.

However, Lawson committed his first high-profile error in Formula 1 at the start of Saturday’s Sprint Race, losing control of his car and ending up in the gravel at Turn 2.

Reflecting on the blunder, Lawson, who has been overlooked for a 2024 F1 race seat, admits he will continue to mull over the incident once he returns to the sidelines.

Asked if he would be easily able to move the mishap aside on Saturday evening, Lawson responded: “No, because I don’t have time to make these kind of mistakes.

“Obviously, I have a short run in Formula 1 at the moment, so it’s important for me to make the most of every session. And I definitely can’t afford to have mistakes like this.”

After only qualifying 14th in the earlier Sprint Shootout, Lawson opted for the Medium compound with the hope of capitalising on the Soft tyre runners losing grip at the end.

But having managed to gain positions at Turn 1, Lawson concedes that he was caught out by cars encountering moments ahead at Turn 2 and was unable to reduce his speed before his car pitched into a sudden spin.

“It was obviously pretty poor. But it’s the same for everybody. So obviously a big mistake for me and I’m obviously very sorry to the team,” he reiterated.

“Really caught me out. Turn 1 was really good on-line, made up some places.

“Then Turn 2, I saw a lot of cars having big slides, but by then I’d already committed to the speed that I was taking and they checked up and I basically just lost it. Big mistake.”

Although Lawson navigated the opening exchanges of Sunday’s grand prix unscathed, the Red Bull affiliate bemoaned Lance Stroll cutting across his path, costing him places.

Lawson eventually struggled to 17th by the chequered flag, last of the classified runners. The Kiwi concedes that it’s “pretty tough” to end his substitute spell with his worst result.

While Ricciardo delayed his comeback to miss the round in Qatar, the eight-time Formula 1 race winner is set to return to the fray next weekend in Austin, Texas.

“We had a good start next to Stroll and [he] just didn’t really see me, so swiped across the front of me,” Lawson explained.

“And then I lost like two more spots, so it was obviously pretty frustrating there.

“Obviously you want to go out on a high, so this is pretty tough to finish off on. It’s just something really to look into.

“Obviously the first couple of races went really good, we were building up, and then this weekend I think we just struggled.”