Lawson's F1 debut, Dixon Wins in Illinois, Kiwis strong at Sepang: Your week in motorsport

Lawson Makes Impressive F1 Debut

Liam Lawson from Pukekohe made his official Formula One debut this weekend, filling the Alpha Tauri seat for an injured Daniel Ricciardo. With torrential rain during qualifying, it was a very challenging set of circumstances for Lawson to adapt to quickly, and he was noticeably tentative, qualifying 20th for the Dutch GP.

Changing weather made for a very chaotic race. The circuit was dry as cars took to the grid, but an intense downpour saw much of the field pit for intermediate tyres at the start of lap 2, and teams were hurriedly preparing tyre sets. The commotion saw Lawson’s Alpha Tauri teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, hold up Lawson, who was forced to double stack behind Tsunoda.

It was all go for Lawson’s first-ever F1 pitstop, and in the process, the Kiwi impeded Haas driver Kevin Magnussen and was penalized 10 seconds.

The track dried again by lap 10, seeing a flurry of tyre changes. Lawson, who was positioned as high as 11th, served his 10-second penalty, dropping back to 17th.

The field settled into the race, and Lawson was performing well in a battle pack with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc in a damaged Ferrari. Lawson passed Leclerc in the chicane but let the French driver pass using DRS on the straight. Leclerc retired shortly afterwards, but Lawson demonstrated strong racecraft and despite the conditions, drove a tidy race, which was ultimately the only goal.

One last downpour in the final stanza saw more frantic pit action and some drivers aquaplaning. Race officials restarted the race with 5 laps to run. Lawson, who was in 16th, overtook Valtteri Bottas for 15th, and Mercedes driver George Russell was forced to retire with a puncture. Lawson drove a clean race to cross the line in 14th, but a time penalty for his teammate Tsunoda saw the Kiwi claim 13th in the official tally.

An absolutely superb drive on debut for Lawson; his performance in the horrid conditions will surely be noted by key decision-makers at Red Bull / Alpha Tauri.

Unsurprisingly, given Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s pace and dominance this season, the Dutch driver claimed a home victory and equalled Sebastian Vettel and Alberto Ascari’s record of nine consecutive Formula 1 wins.

Lawson looks likely to drive again for Ricciardo at Monza next week.

Dixon wins at Illinois. Indycars Championship heats up

Kiwi, Scott McLaughlin topped the final qualifying session for the Indycars Bommarito Group 500 in Illinois clocking an average speed of 182.951mph (294km/h) around the oval circuit. While McLaughlin could claim Pole Position, he was forced to start tenth on the grid as he along with Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Takuma Sato (Chip Ganassi Racing), Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti Autosport) and Agustin Canapino (Juncos Hollinger Racing) were all penalised for unapproved engine changes since the last round on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

With Dixon starting in 16^th, it was looking like it would be difficult for the veteran to win, but he and his Chip Ganassi Racing engineer had other thoughts. Dixon is the King of extracting the maximum mileage from his car and he drove flawlessly to a number the whole race. Running long on the first pit window, Dixon took the lead in the first quarter of the race and just continued to extend his lead all race, The Iceman giving the entire field a driving lesson in the process. With 54 laps remaining Dixon pitted and still was only 10 seconds of the lead with all other cars needing to pit.

Dixon would cross the line a full 22 seconds ahead of his closest competitor. An incredible comeback. McLaughlin would race to 5th.

Crucially too for Dixon’s 7^th Championship battle, Josef Newgarden clipped the wall effectively taking himself out of championship contention, while the Championship leader, Alex Palou also couldn’t execute as an effective strategy, finishing 7^th.

Scott Dixon closes the points gap between he and Alex Palou to 74 points. There are 55 points on offer each weekend with two rounds to race in the Indycars Championship. If Dixon is to win a seventh championship he will equal AJ Foyt for championship wins.

“Thanks to the whole team today, they gave me the number to drive to today and they were perfect. We won’t lift until we’re out of it [the championship]” Said Dixon post race.

Perhaps second place getter, Pato O’Ward summed it up best.
“Scott Dixon did a Scott Dixon today.”

Podium for McElrea

Hunter McElrea finished third in in the Indycars NXT support race with an exciting battle with Christian Rasmussen. Eventual race winner Rasmussen held a steady lead one second over fellow front-row starter McElrea for the first 30 laps of the 75-lap race. But Rasmussen lost grip and drifted high in Turn 2 on the Illinois oval that loss of momentum let McElrea pounce.

McElrea powered past Rasmussen in Turn 3 and started to pull away. But just five laps later, Rasmussen used the slower No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing car of Rasmus Lindh as a pick and passed McElrea for the lead. Rasmussen led McElrea by 4.2745 seconds on Lap 51 but was losing grip from his Firestone tires, and McElrea pulled to within just .8516 of a second on Lap 55.

But a safety car with just laps to go gave Rasmussen a reprieve and unfortunately on restart McElrea couldn’t defend against a charging Louis Foster.

Hunter McElrea sits second in the championship behind Rasmussen.

Kiwis Strong at Sepang

Marco Giltrap took the seat of the EBM Porsche 911 GT3R for the Malaysia round of the Thailand Super Series. Giltrap has experience at Sepang from contesting the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia series, and he and co-driver Adrian D’Silva qualified higher up the order in P2 for the first race of the meeting.

The #61 EBM Porsche was running comfortably in position 2 for the first half of the race. The mixed category racing requires Pro GT3 entries to take longer pit stops than the GTM / GT4 cars, and they worked their way back through the field.

In some exciting racing, it was all about making your tires last in the Malaysian heat. Giltrap and D’Silva ultimately crossed the line in P5 for race one.

Qualifying 4th, the pair raced a clean second race, but again the grip dropped off, and they came home 8th following some intense on-track battles.

Meanwhile, Giltrap’s regular Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia co-driver, Chris van der Drift, has closed the gap on the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia standings to just 15 points after back-to-back wins at Sepang.

Van der Drift led from start to finish and moved up from third to second in the championship. The Carrera Cup Asia series has two rounds to run, with one supporting the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix in mid-September and then Shanghai in October.