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Can Lawson keep seat for 2027 season?

Formula 1 cars will be back on track next week when the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort takes place from 21-23 August.

In the meantime, you can get your F1 fix as our correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

As a Kiwi, I'm biased - but clearly Liam Lawson's been performing at Racing Bulls so far this year, and he's currently 'best of the rest' in the driver standings. Thoughts on his future in F1, particularly before the 2027 season? - Isabella

Given the Racing Bulls have the fifth quickest car on average this season, and Lawson is considerably the more experienced of their two drivers, 'best of the rest' in the championship behind the drivers from the top four teams is exactly where he should be.

However, Lawson's issue - in terms of prolonging his career in F1 - is recent history, and his current team-mate.

Arvid Lindblad is a rookie this year, but he is already proving pretty much a match for Lawson. As team principal Alan Permane puts it, the team have "two quick guys" who are "incredibly close" in performance.

Lindblad is trailing in the championship by 20 points, yes, but on pure pace there is little to choose between them.

Lawson leads the qualifying head-to-head 6-5 at races where a fair comparison can be made but, on average speed, Lindblad is actually slightly ahead - by 0.017secs.

That's impressive for a rookie in this context.

Equally, Isack Hadjar was more impressive than Lawson in 2025 - hence Red Bull's decision to promote him in favour of Yuki Tsunoda for this season.

In terms of whether he is a candidate for a move up the grid, Lawson will not find it easy to recover his reputation from the two poor races he had alongside Max Verstappen at the start of 2025, after which Red Bull took the decision to demote him back to Racing Bulls and swap him with Tsunoda.

Once there, Lawson was pretty comfortably beaten by Hadjar.

As for this season and the future, Permane points out the goal of him and his team is to "develop drivers" for Red Bull.

If Red Bull were still run by the old regime of Helmut Marko and Christian Horner, there would be no hope of Lawson getting another chance in the senior team.

The modus operandi of the new leadership, of Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies and soon-to-be head of the young driver programme Gwen Lagrue, and how they view Lawson in all this context, remains to be seen.

Five things we've learned from first half of F1 season

How does F1/the FIA decide where to have sprint races? Silverstone - with a big crowd in every day - was great this year but other races this season didn't look like they had full stands on the Friday and Saturday. - Phil

The location of the sprint events is ultimately decided by Formula 1 as the commercial rights holder. The FIA - the sport's governing body - does formally approve the calendar, but that's essentially a rubber-stamping exercise.

From F1's point of view, primarily it wants the sprints to take place on tracks that will provide an exciting qualifying session and race.

After that, it's about spreading them evenly through the calendar so there are not too many bunched together.

Of course, there are commercial considerations, too. A track has to pay more to host a sprint. But F1 says it would not take the money if it thought it was the wrong place for a sprint.

Then there is the question of the tracks themselves and whether they want a sprint or not. This will be because they feel they can get more spectators through the gate, and/or provide better value for money.

Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle was keen to have a sprint this year because they want to "deliver as much value as possible for the ticket price", and a sprint means spectators get two races and two qualifying sessions on one weekend.

Pringle said: "We felt it was well worth the additional cost [on the race fee] to give more action."

He pointed out there was a total of 500,000 spectators at the British Grand Prix over the four days in 2025, and 564,000 in 2026.

"The [extra] 64,000 was primarily Friday and Saturday, and we do put that down to the sprint," he said.

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'It's highly likely to be Imola' - Will F1 have a European finale?

Which F1 drivers could consistently challenge for a world title in inferior cars? My wife and I can only come up with four: Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen. Do you agree? - Martin

It's very hard to challenge for a title in an inferior car, and the number of drivers who can do it are limited as a result. Essentially, it is only the very best.

At first glance, your list looks decent, but you have left out two huge names - Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost.

Prost's most exceptional season was in 1986, when he beat the two Williams drivers - Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet - to win his second world title in what was clearly an inferior McLaren.

There is also a very strong case that Hamilton did not have the best car with McLaren in 2008 (or he and Alonso in 2007), given what was learned subsequently about the relative performance of Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen when they were team-mates to Alonso.

The point being that Hamilton and Alonso were extremely closely matched, while Alonso comfortably beat both Massa and Raikkonen, so if Ferrari could compete for a title against McLaren in those years, it could only be because their car was better.

Even in 2017 and 2018, when Hamilton won, the Ferrari was the better car for a large part of both those seasons before Mercedes hit their stride.

The stand-out year relevant to this question is 2012, when Alonso drove his best season and took the title fight to the final race in what was statistically the fourth quickest car.

That was an absolutely extraordinary achievement, and it is rightly celebrated. Even more so when you realise that had only one of two incidents for which Alonso was entirely blameless not happened, he would not have lost out to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.

That's a reference, of course, to Alonso being taken out at the start of the Belgian and Japanese Grands Prix by collisions with Lotus drivers - Romain Grosjean in Spa and Raikkonen in Suzuka.

Alonso also arguably won in 2005 in an inferior car, but then it depends what "inferior" means. The Renault was not as fast as Raikkonen's McLaren on balance, but it was certainly more reliable.

As for the rest, no argument with Max Verstappen after coming so close against Lando Norris and McLaren last season, which was Alonso 2012-esque.

Senna won the title in 1991 in a McLaren that was inferior to the Williams FW14 being driven by Nigel Mansell, although the Williams suffered significant reliability problems that helped him.

And he also probably did it in 1990 - in his McLaren compared to Prost's Ferrari - given Senna's pace advantage over Prost when they were McLaren team-mates in 1988 and 1989.

Schumacher? Arguably the Benetton was an inferior car to the Williams in 1995, but then he was consistently a superior driver to Damon Hill and David Coulthard, both of whom made a bit of a hash of that season.

Williams also probably had an advantage for the second half of 1994, once they had got on top of the aerodynamic problems that thwarted the start to their season.

But would Schumacher have beaten Senna in 1994 had the Brazilian not been killed at Imola? Unlikely.

And it's hard to argue any of his Ferrari titles were won in an inferior car.

Beyond that, there are not many obvious cases when the champion did not have the best car.

Exceptions would be years massively skewed by circumstance.

One example is the tragic 1982 season, when it was a toss-up between Ferrari and Renault for the best car. After Gilles Villeneuve died and team-mate Didier Pironi suffered horrendous injuries, and with Renault afflicted by reliability issues, Keke Rosberg came through to take the title for Williams despite winning only one race.

Or 1979, when the championship scoring system was a bizarre split calculation when only the best four scores from the two half-seasons could be counted, and the Williams FW07 made its debut too late for Alan Jones to challenge Jody Scheckter and Villeneuve in the generally inferior Ferrari 312 T4.

Leonardo Fornaroli looks like another Russell/Leclerc/Piastri calibre driver based on his F3 and F2 performances. If he was to land an F1 seat, where is the most likely place he would end up? - Harry

Fornaroli is the reigning F2 champion, and won F3 the previous season. He has been a member of the McLaren driver development programme since the end of last year.

The Italian has done two practice sessions for McLaren - in Barcelona and Austria this year - as well as two what are known as 'TPC' tests - in older cars - for McLaren in Portimao, and Haas in Jerez.

There are not that many seats up for grabs next year and the driver market is on hold for a large part until it becomes clear whether Max Verstappen is going to leave Red Bull.

If Fornaroli is to get a seat, though, it seems most likely it would be at Haas, where Esteban Ocon's place is under threat.

Haas, however, already have Toyota-contracted Ryo Hirakawa and former Alpine driver Jack Doohan on their books.

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'Verstappen to McLaren!' - mid-season F1 predictions

Teams always talk about getting "the right balance" of the car. What does that mean specifically, and how do they go about getting it? - Ivor

The car's balance is how a driver experiences its behaviour through a corner.

Does it slide at the front or back (respectively, understeer or oversteer), does it slide differently at different points of the corner, and is the behaviour consistent or unpredictable, etc?

Every driver has their preference as to how they want the car to feel, and the closer the car is to that ideal, generally the quicker they will be.

F1 cars are highly sophisticated prototypes with a number of complex factors affecting how they behave in the cornering phase, which can be broken down into multiple sections making up the time from the moment the driver hits the brakes, to when the car is straight again after the corner.

As a result, there are many different ways in which a car's behaviour can be changed.

These include - but are in no way limited to - the level of downforce chosen at front and rear, the settings for the suspension and differential, and brake pad and disc material.

Drivers can also affect the balance with their driving style. For example, how they enter the corner, when they turn in, how they turn in, how they operate the throttle and brakes on corner entry and so on.

Send us your question for F1 correspondent Andrew Benson

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