'Holy moly that's a lot of power!' Liam Lawson on his taste of Formula One
Liam Lawson set the second-fastest time of the Formula 1 young driver test in Abu Dhabi.
Liam Lawson during the F1 Young Driver Test. (Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool)
"What an amazing day, it’s incredible how unbelievably fast these cars are," said Lawson, after spending a day driving for Alpha Tauri around the Yas Marina Circuit.
"I’ve obviously driven in the simulator before and when I’m there I always think that there’s no way that the car can actually be that quick in real life, but it really is."
"I want to say a huge thank you to Red Bull, Dr Marko and everyone that has made it possible to be here driving for Scuderia AlphaTauri today."
"This has been something that I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid so it’s just incredible and I’m really, really happy."
Liam Lawson talking to Scuderia AlphaTauri engineers during the post-season F1 test. (Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool)
Lawson joined the Red Bull Academy after taking out the Toyota Racing Series in 2019.
He then joined FIA Formula 3, before moving up to Formula 2 and running a season of DTM backed by Red Bull.
"This has been something that I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid so it’s just incredible and I’m really, really happy" said the New Zealander.
"I was definitely nervous pulling out of the garage for the first time, I tried not to show it, but I definitely felt it."
"It took me a little while to get to full throttle but when I did I thought ‘holy moly that’s a lot of power!’"
Liam Lawson on track at Yas Marina Circuit. (Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool)
Lawson set the second fastest time of the day with a time of 1:24.517.
He completed 125 laps of the circuit across the day of testing.
The team ran the tests blind so Lawson had no preconceived ideas of what was trying to be achieved.
"The biggest difference is just the downforce, there’s significantly more than anything I’m used to."
"We worked on a lot of different things in the run plan today, both short and long runs with different tyres and one thing that was really cool and new to me was the live data."
"The ability to have the team update me as I’m out on track was really interesting, although you couldn’t make a mistake without them knowing!"
"Getting feedback from Yuki too was also really great, we’ve been teammates before, so it was good to get his understandings and learnings and it was nice to be back driving with him again."
"I really didn’t want to get out of the car today, it’s been amazing to get my first taste of F1."
