Lawson replaces Vips as Red Bull reserve driver

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In the round-up: Formula 2 driver Liam Lawson has taken over reserve driver duties for Red Bull following Juri Vips being dropped from the Red Bull junior team.

In brief

Lawson replaces Vips as Red Bull reserve driver

Formula 2 driver Liam Lawson has taken over reserve driver duties for Red Bull following Juri Vips being dropped from the Red Bull junior team.

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Vips, who took part in a Friday Practice run for Red Bull at the Spanish Grand Prix, was dropped by Red Bull after he used a racial slur during a live Twitch stream late last month. Vips had been streaming with Lawson at the time of the incident.

With four Red Bull junior drivers in Formula 2, Lawson is currently tenth, behind third-placed Jehan Daruvala and sixth-placed rookie Dennis Hauger. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner confirmed that Lawson, who races for Carlin, will take over reserve driver duties.

“Liam Lawson steps into that role, obviously following the Juri Vips announcement,” said Horner.

“Jehan is doing a great job and we’re just following his progress with interest, as well as Dennis Hauger as well, all qualifying for super licences. That’s our coverage at this point in time.”

Gasly did not expect to get out of Q1 with current AlphaTauri package

After narrowly failing to get through to Q3, Pierre Gasly said he was expecting to struggle to progress out of the very first phase of qualifying at Silverstone.

“It’s quite sad to say but I’m actually pretty pleased with with 11th because we knew coming here will be extremely tough considering all the high speed corners,” said Gasly.

He said the situation was so bad that AlphaTauri had not anticipated a top 15 start. “Today we were wondering actually if we can get out of Q1, in the end we came close to Q3. So it was quite positive considering where we are at the moment.”

Ocon Q2 exit due to battery problem

After qualifying fifteenth for the British Grand Prix, Esteban Ocon said that his Q2 run had been compromised by a hybrid system failure that saw his car’s battery fail to charge correctly.

“We had a battery related issue, unfortunately,” Ocon admitted. “We missed quite a lot of of power in the last couple laps and I was I was down at 0%, I guess. So, not ideal, unfortunately.”

Ocon said he hadn’t experienced the problems before. “I trust the guys to to find the issue and and get it fixed for tomorrow,” he said.

“We’ve done it [before], starting from the back and coming back into points,” Ocon added. That’s going to be the game again. And hopefully we can do that.”

Formula 2 car “feels very slow” after Monza F1 test – Doohan

Formula 2 sprint race winner Jack Doohan completed a test for Alpine at Monza, on the Tuesday before the British Grand Prix.

He said the test was part of his regular programme as a member of the Alpine Academy. “The main goals were just to familiarise myself more with the Formula 1 car and try to get a better understanding of what goes on inside and how I can better use the tools that the car has available for me,” said Doohan.

“So we were working on different mappings and different settings as Monza is quite a heavy braking track with a lot of top speed into very tight chicanes, has a mixture of very low speed and very high speed. So a lot that can be done throughout the lap.”

“It went well and was in the end a little more seat time, but they’re completely different machinery in the end. It’s night and day, the differences between the two. So it’s not easy, obviously, to switch. But to be honest, when you hop back in, everything feels very slow. So it’s quite good.”

Quotes: Hazel Southwell

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Comment of the day

After a wet qualifying for the British Grand Prix saw a driver claim a maiden pole position and Nicholas Latifi reach Q3 for the first time, @petebaldwin feels that was sufficient entertainment for a Saturday…

I’ll say it – that was a million times better than a sprint race!
petebaldwin

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Troma, Chris Preston and Marcia Simon!

On this day in motorsport

  • 40 years ago today Didier Pironi scored the final victory of his F1 career at Zandvoort, while Rene Arnoux survived a massive shunt at Tarzan

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...
Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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6 comments on “Lawson replaces Vips as Red Bull reserve driver”

  1. Pingal
    3rd July 2022, 4:57

    Jehan Daruvala isn’t the championship leader in Formula 2. Might need to edit that one.

  2. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    3rd July 2022, 6:40

    Lawson is a somewhat unsurprising choice.

    Typical Seb.

    Not all Sprints have been worse in comparison.

  3. Profile Photo

    mantresx (@mantresx)
    3rd July 2022, 6:59

    So how ready is he to take over in case they really need another driver??

    Let’s be honest, they would just call Hulkenberg anyway.

  4. jff
    3rd July 2022, 7:17

    re. CotD
    Why compare it (only) to a Sprint Race; this quali was better than many races.
    Sprint weekends still have normal quali sessions which can be in the wet as well.
    Calling for sprinklers would be a more appropriate comment.

  5. S
    3rd July 2022, 12:08

    I find it funny how people will go out of their way to speak against sprints, when it wouldn’t have made any difference what type of session it was. Any/every competitive session in weather such as yesterday’s qualifying would be a cracker.

    It just reinforces that there should be less track time wasted on practice sessions and more used for competition.

  6. Profile Photo

    BasCB (@bascb)
    4th July 2022, 8:48

    That McLaren adapted to be able to be driven just by using head movement and breath is really something.

Comments are closed.