Christian Horner has defended Liam Lawson after Red Bull’s new recruit endured a nightmare debut at the Australian Grand Prix. The New Zealander was eliminated in Q1 after two mistakes and then crashed out of the race on Sunday.

“It was a difficult weekend for him,” the Red Bull team principal said. “We changed the car to put a bit more downforce on the car. It’s a very hard track to overtake at. We took a risk of leaving him out longer because he was out of the points, and we thought, ‘You know what, roll the dice and maybe it will come right’ at exactly the point it started to rain more, so it’s difficult to blame him for that last bit.

“I think the one flash of light that he can take out of it is that on the dry tyres, he actually posted the second fastest lap time of the Grand Prix with a 22.9 versus Max’s 23.0 and Lando’s 22.1.

“So if there was one positive we can take, it was that his pace on the dry was not too bad. The problem is that missing P3, you’re on the back foot and then the pressure builds. He grabbed a brake on the second set of tyres, and then the third, he was half a second up before another mistake there.

“I think next weekend will be tough because it’s a sprint race at a track that he’s not been to before, but he’s pretty resilient, and this weekend wasn’t representative of what he’s capable of.”