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Liam Lawson recorded the 16th fastest time in an interrupted first practice session of Formula One’s Melbourne Grand Prix.

Preparing for his full debut with former world champions Red Bull, Lawson recorded 22 laps of the Albert Park Circuit and put in a best time of 1m 18.455s.

Lawson was the slowest of Red Bull’s four cars, as teammate Max Verstappen recorded the fifth-best time, while Racing Bulls pair Isack Hadjar and Yuki Tsunoda were ninth and 11th respectively.

McLaren’s Lando Norris was fastest in the first practice, with a best time of 1m 17.252s, 1.203s quicker than Lawson.

However, how much should be read into Lawson’s practice times is yet to be seen, as two separate red flag incidents curtailed time on track for the 20 drivers.

Practice sessions involve teams working on a number of different things, with tyres, fuel loads and aerodynamic configurations used to collect data before the Grand Prix’s qualifying session.

While much of the day’s focus revolved around the first sighting of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, how Lawson compared to Verstappen was always going to be a point of interest after the Kiwi’s rapid promotion to the world championship contenders.

Lawson has been set a target of being within 0.3s per lap of his teammate across the 2025 season. However, after the first session, Lawson was 0.759s back from Verstappen.

In his first taste of driving the Albert Park Circuit, the size of Lawson’s challenge in getting to speed with Red Bull’s new RB21 car was made evident when the Kiwi clipped the wall at turn nine, before the second DRS zone.

After eight laps, and still coming to grips with his car, Lawson closed the gap between himself and Verstappen to just over half a second, before the first of the two red flags, when Alpine’s Jack Doohan went wide, and sprayed gravel across the track with just over 40 minutes to go.

Once the session resumed, the threat of the gravel trap for the weekend was made all the more clear when McLaren’s Oscar Piastri – the local favourite – also found himself in trouble after leaving the track.

Following the resumption, after pitting for soft tyres, Verstappen set the fastest time of the first session, more than a second clear of Lawson’s best effort.

However, after spending close to 20 minutes in the pits with a damaged floor, Lawson emerged on the soft tyres, only to see another red flag when Haas’ Oliver Bearman hit the wall and lost his front wing.

That incident also came at turn nine, which troubled drivers in the earlier Formula Three and Formula Two sessions as well.

Despite managing to post his fastest lap in the final minutes, Lawson was still unable to challenge the top 10, as Mercedes’ George Russell spun to bring about a yellow flag as the final act of the opening session.

The 20 drivers will return to track on Friday evening for the second session of the day, before qualifying for the Melbourne Grand Prix takes place on Saturday.

is an Online Sports Editor for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016, and previously worked for both ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞhub and 1¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ.