It was a tough weekend in Super Formula for Liam Lawson in Sugo where the 21-year-old New Zealander continued to show great pace but didn’t produce the result that he and the Mugen Team needed.
Lawson has slipped from the lead to second in the championship, 12 points behind Ritomo Miyata and five points clear of his Team Mugen teammate Tomoki Nojiri.
“It’s a real shame because we had pace all weekend, we just didn’t make the best use of it,” says Lawson. “In Quali, we missed the window a little bit and should have been higher up.
“Still we had a really good start, from P6 to P4 and I was ahead of my teammate which should have helped with strategy.
“I think the feeling was that the leaders who boxed early would come out in traffic and that would hinder them. But they got no traffic and were able to put in the lap times and we were losing to them all the way, 40 laps waiting to box.”
“I was stuck behind Tsuboi for far too long, we should have boxed. We’ve got to look at all of that and see how we can do better, make sure we don’t get in this situation again.”
“The positive is that we did have pace, we have that every weekend so we’ve got to go on back to Fuji where we started the season with pole and a win and make a better job of it than we did this weekend.”
Liam will stay on in Japan this week for the official in-season test at Fuji on Friday and Saturday before heading back to the UK and on to his Reserve F1 duties at Red Bull Ring over the first weekend in July.
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