Before he gets on the track to contest the Super Formula championship, Liam Lawson is in a race against time.
A lot of rubber has been burned on the track since the Kiwi driver was last behind the wheel in Super Formula, with the 21-year-old having raced for AlphaTauri in five Formula One events in the past two months.
Lawson impressed in his stint at the top level, earning championship points in just his third race and scoring the best individual finish of any AlphaTauri driver this season with a ninth in Singapore.
It was a massive opportunity for Lawson. However, as he looks to close out his season on Japan’s Super Formula series, the considerable time spent in a Formula One car adds to the challenge of his return to a lower level.
“It’ll be tough. It’s something that I noticed going into F1. I’d driven F1 cars before but, after doing Super Formula this year, it was a big shift. I know it’s going to be tough,” Lawson told the Herald.
“I know it’s in there somewhere, I’ve just got to refresh myself. Hopefully, I can do that as quickly as possible. The only problem is we have such short practice times there. We have one session to get ready for it, so it’s going to be very tough, especially that Saturday round, but we’ll see. Hopefully, by Sunday we’re in a position to still be fighting for the championship.”
Unlike Formula One, where most weekends include three practice sessions before qualifying, this weekend’s racing at Suzuka offers just one practice drive as it is a double-race weekend – with races on Saturday and Sunday evening (NZT) – so every other session is either a race or qualifying.
Heading into the weekend, Lawson sits second in the championship standings with 86 points, just eight points behind leader Ritomo Miyata. With 20 points on offer for a race win, 15 for second and 11 for third – as well as lower hauls for the rest of the top 10 – Lawson is well in contention to finish the year on top.
So far this season, he has had three podiums (all race wins) and another three top-five results. His only finish outside the points was the most recent race at Motegi in late August where his teammate Tomoki Nojiri – two-time defending champion and currently third in the standings – squeezed him off the track coming out of the first turn. Lawson spun out, which triggered a major crash. Although he was able to continue, his race was over at that point.
Lawson goes into the weekend’s racing at Suzuka looking to become the second Kiwi to win the Super Formula championship, after Nick Cassidy lifted the title in 2019.
Regardless of how this weekend plays out, it is likely to be Lawson’s last hurrah in Super Formula. Although his stint in Formula One wasn’t enough to earn him a fulltime seat for the 2024 season, he expects to focus solely on his requirements as the reserve driver for Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri as opposed to juggling that with competing in a series elsewhere, as he has done this year.
Immersing himself entirely in Formula One next year shapes up as a good career move, with three of the four seats in the Red Bull-affiliated teams vacant beyond 2024, along with at least nine other seats across the grid.
“In terms of other championships, I’ve done it all – at least on the F1 path,” Lawson told the Herald. “F2 and Super Formula are the two closest things, especially Super Formula, and by the end of the season I would have done it, so unless I go back for a second time, I think I will probably just focus on being reserve.”
Red Bull Racing: Max Verstappen (signed until the end of 2028) and Sergio Perez (2024)
AlphaTauri: Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo (both 2024)
Ferrari: Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz (both 2024)
Alpine: Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon (both 2024)
Haas: Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg (both 2024)
Aston Martin: Fernando Alonso (2024) and Lance Stroll (rolling contract)
Alfa Romeo: Valtteri Bottas (2025) and Zhou Guanyu (2024)
Williams: Alex Albon (2024) and TBC
Mercedes: Lewis Hamilton and George Russell (both 2025)
McLaren: Lando Norris (2025) and Oscar Piastri (2026)
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.