Lawson Ready For Second Alpha Tauri F1 Drive
Liam Lawson will have his second outing with the Scuderia AlphaTauri Formula 1 team this weekend when he takes part in Free Practice 1 at the Mexican Grand Prix
Oct 27, 2022
The kiwi driver is looking forward to better weather than he experienced in his first official F1 Free Practice outing ahead of Belgian Grand Prix earlier this year.
"The track is at altitude so the air is thinner," said Lawson. "The track is very slippery and the tyres are very sensitive to overheating, on the surface especially, so the last sector is very important, quite often you see the cars sliding around a lot there. Tyre management over the whole lap is very important which is something I have to get my head around also, much more so than in Formula 2."
Lawson, who is the Reserve Driver this year for both the Red Bull and AlphaTauri teams, was in America for last weekend's race in Austin and stayed on for the back-to-back round in Mexico.
Lawson has also been preparing for his Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit debut on the simulator and says it looks like a 'fun place to drive. It's a big step up from F2 but nice to be getting back in the F1 car."
This weekend’s drive will see Lawson drive different cars to his Spa FP1 outing where he was in Pierre Gasly's machine; this time he will pilot the AlphaTauri of Japanese star Yuki Tsunoda. Lawson and Tsunoda were teammates at the beginning of their Red Bull Junior careers when both drove for the German-based Motopark team in European Formula Open where Lawson finished second in the series, one place higher than Tsunoda.
With the championship winning Red Bull team still to confirm a driver for their last FP1 session, it's expected that Lawson will full-fill that role also before the season's end in Abu Dhabi in mid November.
At Abu Dhabi Lawson will have his final round of the FIA Formula 2 championship in which he is part of a five-driver battle to clinch third in the series.