Another stand-out drive for Lawson in Brazil showed another flash of potential
Peter Fox/Getty via Red Bull
Liam Lawson, with his future at the Racing Bulls team still unconfirmed, put in a starring performance at Interlagos last weekend. His starting position from the second row of the grid was helped considerably by the power unit penalties taken elsewhere – neither Max Verstappen nor Lewis Hamilton did serious qualifying runs on the wet track – but he used it as the launchpad to run an early second in the race, pouncing upon Lando Norris’ McLaren at the first corner.
Although he gradually sunk back to the car’s natural level as best of the rest outside the big four by the chequered flag, his race was typically feisty but controlled. He finished seventh in the official results after a late dice with Charles Leclerc led to the Ferrari driver being penalised 5sec for gaining an advantage through contact. But the fact that he was battling the Ferrari at all talks of his tenacity. He has more than double the points of anyone outside the top four teams, although a few of those were scored when he was subbing in the senior Red Bull team for the injured Isack Hadjar (where in a very different car he was within 0.3sec of the incumbent Max Verstappen). He has fused his elbows-out style of racing with a great consistency and a knack of always squeezing out the result.
Among the closely-matched Racing Bulls, Alpine and Audi teams (their cars all around 1sec off the ultimate pace) he is the stand-out performer. But with Red Bull looking for the next world champion from its junior ranks and Lawson in his third season, he may be passed by. His team-mate Arvid Lindblad has been quick enough (though overall slower than Lawson) as a rookie to be retained and a space is being sought for Red Bull’s F2 driver Nikola Tsolov. So Lawson is the guy with the target over his head. Yet almost every time out this year he has demonstrated that not only is he more than worthy of his place on the F1 grid, he might actually be more than just that. Not every megastar arrives like a comet lighting up the night sky, Hamilton, Verstappen or Antonelli style. Some get there step by step, their eyes always fixed on the prize as the rest of the world barely notices their progress. Until they do something extraordinary.
Lawson pushes into second place at the start of the Sao Paulo GP
Grand Prix Photo
There are always parallels in history and the passing last week of 1980 world champion Alan Jones brought Lawson’s current plight to mind. Jones wasn’t really rated as he came through the ranks. He was ok, a good, competitive racer but not fashionable in the way of contemporaries like Ronnie Peterson, James Hunt or Jody Scheckter, all of whom were flamboyantly talented and obviously destined for great things. Jones was an Aussie battler who for sure wouldn’t disgrace himself if he got an F1 chance but no way was he world champion material. Except…
He was rated as the best driver in the world – in the age of Gilles Villeneuve, Carlos Reutemann and Nelson Piquet – and yet Alan Jones, who has just turned 80, remains grossly underappreciated, says Matt Bishop
He did get some F1 chances, low budget rides initially – a privateer Hesketh, the nascent Hill team, then Surtees – and he didn’t disgrace himself. He would get those little teams valuable points if all went well but there was still no evidence of a world champion in waiting. After two seasons it looked like his F1 time was up and the ’77 season began without him, just another little footnote in the sport’s history. Then Tom Pryce was tragically killed at Kyalami and the devastated Shadow team brought Jones in as his short-notice replacement. It wasn’t a big time ride but it was a solidly midfield team, better than those he’d driven for so far. He got into a big dice with Peterson’s Tyrrell in the Spanish Grand Prix, lap after lap of no-holds-barred racing, no quarter given, power slides everywhere. Peterson was wide-eyed in admiration afterwards. But Jones was barely getting started. In the wet Austrian Grand Prix, once Hunt’s leading McLaren had blown up, he took the lead and never lost it, Niki Lauda’s Ferrari behind unable to do anything about him. Alan Jones, grand prix winner.
Alan Jones didn’t start the 1977 F1 season, but by August was celebrating his first GP win in Austria
LAT
He was still just getting started. For his newly-launched single car team Frank Williams signed him for ’78 as, ‘A good solid driver, someone who I thought could get us some good points. We quickly realised we’d stumbled onto something rather better than that.’ Without a front wing failure, he’d likely have won the USA West Grand Prix for the little team, fourth time out. Peterson came by after the race to tell Frank just how fantastic a driver he thought Jones was, having witnessed at close quarters again his amazing car control. Frank and Patrick Head were beginning to agree and the three of them would go on to establish themselves as F1’s gold standard for a couple of years. That was the springboard for the great Williams super-team of the 80s and 90s. Jones was absolutely foundational in the DNA of that team.
So if Red Bull is thinking that Lawson doesn’t have the stuff of champions, is just a tough battler and a safe pair of hands, it might reflect on the case study of Jones and whether Lawson has displayed any of the qualities which served the ’80 world champion so well. From where I’m sitting, he has.
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