“What the hell just happened? I have no idea,” Lawson said to his race engineer Ernesto Desiderio after his exit.
At the very least, Lawson will start 18th, after Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda was handed a 10-place grid penalty for overtaking Oscar Piastri under a red flag during practice, seeing his qualifying position of 11th become 20th.
Lawson’s Racing Bulls teammate Isack Hadjar managed to qualify ninth, but could face punishment for impeding Williams’ Carlos Sainz in Q1.
A year after George Russell claimed pole position over Max Verstappen despite both setting an identical time, the Mercedes driver took it outright, bettering the world champion by 0.160s, as the duo locked out the front row for the second Canadian Grand Prix in a row.
Russell is the first driver besides Verstappen or the two McLaren cars to qualify on pole this season.World championship leader Piastri will start third, and is joined on the front row by Russell’s Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli.
The result is Lawson’s lowest qualifying performance since this year’s Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, where he qualified in 20th position and started from pit lane.
Speaking after qualifying, Lawson lamented his team’s tyre set-up for his elimination.
“I have no idea,” Lawson said when asked to explain his exit. “We’ve been struggling to make the tyre work on the first lap, all weekend.
“The first run in Q1, I had to do a build lap to get them in the right window. We didn’t do a build lap for the last run. I just didn’t have much grip through the lap.
“It’s pretty disappointing the car’s been fast.”
That, though, came in the troublesome RB21 car, before his in-season demotion that saw Tsunoda take his place at Red Bull, with Lawson returning to current side Racing Bulls.
Lawson’s struggles in qualifying continues a worrying trend for the Kiwi. The last three race weekends have seen him impress in Friday practices, with five top 10 finishes from six attempts, but only qualify higher than 11th once, coming in Monaco.
Cognizant of the risk of being caught in traffic in his attempt to post a push lap time, Lawson slightly delayed his exit from the Racing Bulls garage, but was able to post a first time of 1m 13.049s, to temporarily sit seventh.
Admittedly, that first Q1 effort came before all 20 drivers had completed a push lap, as Lawson dropped to 16th - and into the drop zone - by the time that was the case.
As Lawson crossed the line for a second time, and improved to a lap of 1m 12.678s, the Kiwi moved up to 10th, and was 0.240s clear of an early exit.
With just over five minutes left in Q1, damage to Alex Albon’s Williams engine cover came unstuck and left debris on the track to trigger a red flag. That, though, only caused a logjam of cars once the session resumed, and left drivers at serious risk of being stuck in traffic.
Lawson left the garage with just over three minutes left on the clock in Q1, as he was pushed down to 14th by drivers behind him improving their times, with a margin of 0.202s keeping him from the drop.
And while Lawson was able to improve his time to 1m 12.525s - his best effort of the weekend so far - it wasn’t good enough to earn a place in Q2, as the Kiwi set the 19th-fastest time.
Earlier, Lawson’s final attempt at practice was interrupted by a red flag, with the Kiwi just five laps into his last chance to come to terms with the track.
Piastri clipped the wall at turn 14, lost his rear suspension, and triggered a temporary stoppage before qualifying.
Following two top-10 finishes in Friday practice, Lawson’s best time of 1m 12.791s was just under a second off the pace set by Norris, and 0.140s off Hadjar. FP3 saw Lawson miss the top 10 by just 0.218s.
That mark was good enough for 13th place, having registered two top 10 practice finishes on Friday local time. However, that time was also 0.40s slower than Lawson’s best effort in FP2, 1m 12.751s.
Interestingly, Lawson completed all three practice sessions without using the hard tyre, which will likely be the compound of choice for the Grand Prix.
