Lawson's first day back at Red Bull was very revealing

For Liam Lawson to be frustrated after lapping a respectable 0.365s off team-mate Max Verstappen in sprint qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix is revealing.

With just one free practice and a day in the simulator under his belt, Lawson looks significantly more comfortable with the Red Bull than he did at any point in his troubled two-event stint with the Formula 1 team last year - but even a margin well under half the deficit of the best of his three qualifying outings alongside Verstappen last year didn't do his underlying pace justice.

Lawson's elimination in SQ2, leaving him 11th on the grid for tomorrow’s sprint race, was so disappointing given it was out of kilter with what came before. He made that clear over the radio after the second of his two quick laps in that session, saying “I’ve no idea what happened in Q2”. He didn't have a clearer explanation after he got out of the car.

“Honestly, I don’t really know,” said Lawson of what went wrong in SQ2. “It's been an interesting day, but normally you'd improve through quali and we started SQ1 quite strong and then we didn't make the same step that everybody else did. Obviously we'll look into it, there's a lot to learn today, but so far I feel quite good in the car. I was honestly feeling OK through quali, I thought we'd get through, so it's a shame.”

Feeling “OK” in the car is what matters. You could see he was relatively at ease watching trackside in free practice at the banked Turn 3. Yes, he was a little more conservative than team-mate Max Verstappen in how he attacked the corner, as you would expect, but Lawson at least looked like he was on top of the machinery.

The main concern was that two of his quick laps at the end of the session resulted in him running wide and dragging the floor of the car across the exit kerb.

The last time I watched him in a Red Bull up close was in China last year, where he looked all at sea on what proved to be his final outing - until now - for the team. There, he was tentative, taking a trip through the gravel on his first push lap and never getting to grips with it, but here he looked nothing like that. He was not at Verstappen’s level today, inevitably, but in the circumstances it was a good start.

The same applies to SQ1. The first of his three push laps was slow, but that was down to traffic on the lap. His final two efforts were much more convincing, allowing him to end the first segment of qualifying 0.165s ahead of Verstappen in sixth place.

This raised expectations for SQ2, as even on a day when Red Bull was struggling Lawson appeared to have the pace to make the top 10. So to miss out, and only be a few thousandths ahead of the man who took over his usual car, Yuki Tsunoda, was understandably a blow.

Moving with the evolving track is one of the skills of qualifying, but it’s excusable not to have mastery of it for a driver who is unfamiliar with the car. There was a reminder of that at the end of SQ1, when he returned to the garage and referenced what Racing Bulls normally does with the front wing flap angle. He reported he was happy with the balance, and it’s not clear what direction Red Bull went in because the radio feed fell silent to the outside world, but understanding how a car might react to adding in a little more front wing as the track grip improves is something that comes with experience of the machinery. Given Lawson lacks that, the way today played out bodes well for the rest of the weekend.

“It definitely does,” said Lawson. “We'll obviously try and fix it and put it together for quali. But we definitely had the potential to be right up there today, so it's frustrating.”

What matters is that this was, all things considered, a good start for Lawson. And that's much better than what happened last year.