28 August 2023 , 19:13
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AlphaTauri have confirmed that Liam Lawson will deputise Daniel Ricciardo until the latter has recovered from a broken hand.
Lawson stepped in for Ricciardo at the Dutch Grand Prix on the weekend after the Australian was ruled out following a crash in practice. Ricciardo underwent surgery in Barcelona over the weekend after breaking his metacarpal when hitting the wall while avoiding Oscar Piastri.
He had already been ruled out of the Italian Grand Prix this weekend and his team have now decided to stick with Lawson – a 21-year-old Red Bull junior driver.
A statement from AlphaTauri read: “We are delighted that Daniel's surgery went well and that he is now on the road to recovery.
"We hope to see him at the track again very soon, but until he is fully fit, we can confirm that Liam, who did a good job in difficult circumstances in Zandvoort, will continue to drive alongside Yuki [Tsunoda], starting from our home race this weekend in Monza.”
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Lawson was drafted in as a last-minute replacement in the Netherlands and qualified 20th for the race. He ended up finishing 13th in a chaotic race which featured wet weather, red flags and safety car restarts as Max Verstappen continued his winning run.
“It was good, it was a lot going on. When I was rolling up to the grid and it was starting to rain, it wasn’t the best feeling but the race was okay,” Lawson said afterwards.
Liam Lawson will continue racing for Alpha Tauri (Andrea Diodato/Getty Images)"I think the second half of the race was not so bad, once we got clean air and also on the inters at the end was not too bad. Just happy to survive.”
Ricciardo posted a photo of himself in a hospital bed following an operation on Sunday. “Had surgery this morning, got my first bit of metalwork so that’s cool,” he said on Instagram. “Big thanks to everyone who reached out and kept my spirits up. This ain’t a setback, just all part of the comeback.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was unable to put a timeline on Ricciardo’s recovery, but suggested his return could be faster than normally anticipated. “He had an operation earlier today, he’s had several screws and a plate fitted to his metacarpal, it went well, it was successful,” said Horner.
“It was a fairly straightforward procedure so now it is all about recovery and we’ll see. For a normal human being that would be a couple of months, for a Grand Prix driver it’s often much shorter.”
Piastri thanked Ricciardo for his quick-thinking, saying: "I hope he has a speedy recovery. It's never nice to see somebody get hurt. I know he had the choice of hitting me or the wall, so I'm thankful he chose the wall. But, yeah, I just hope he recovers quickly, and we see him back on the grid.”