Liam Lawson: In the first round I was scared

Liam Lawson raced the RB7 at Australia’s famous Mount Panorama circuit in Bathurst and we spoke about its demonstration performance yesterday.

Then, in an interview with Speedcafe, the New Zealand driver shared his impressions of driving a Formula 1 car in 2011, stressing that he had no intention of breaking the unofficial lap record set at the time by Jenson Button in a McLaren-Mercedes MP4 was dropped. -23 also during demo runs.

Actually, Liam’s job was to entertain the crowd, so he stopped several times on the track to spin the donuts. However, he managed to experience strong emotions behind the wheel of the car in which Sebastian Vettel won his second championship title.

“Impressions are just insane! On the first lap, to be honest, I was scared, and going up the hill, and the climb there is quite steep, I was very nervous, Lawson admitted. “But by the second round I was pretty comfortable, piloting feeling was pretty good, so I liked everything.”

The Bathurst demo car was specially tuned, with much higher ground clearance than during the race, so that the RB7’s aero package generated less downforce.

“At some points it shook a little bit on uneven surfaces, but this is still a Formula 1 car and I expected it to be worse,” Liam continued. – When the track went down, it was already easier to follow the race track – the feeling was just great. On the Conrod straight I was going full speed and before The Chase chicane I braked, I don’t know, probably 120 meters. In general everything was great.

But the car was acting nervous and I was just trying to keep it on the track, but once I was able to adjust everything was fine.

In 2023, Lawson will make his debut in the Japanese Super Formula series, where the season starts in early April, and participation in the exhibition races in Australia has been helpful in maintaining racing form.