Liam Lawson this week heads to Germany to compete in the fifth round of the ADAC German Formula 4 Championship. The 16-year-old Kiwi from Pukekohe will be driving at the same race meeting as F1 driver Brendon Hartley, in the support races to the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.
And on top of that, Lawson gets to have lunch with Ferrari’s best, Sebastien Vettel, who has extended his lead in the Driver’s Championship last weekend following victory in the British GP.
Vettel, who is a patron of the ADAC Junior Programme in Germany, has invited the current top-three placed drivers in the German Formula 4 championship to a lunch. Lawson, currently 2nd in the series, will be joined by German driver Lirim Zendeli and Brazilian Enzo Fittipaldi.
“Excited. I’ve never met an F1 driver before. I hope we get to spend a bit of time with him,” said Lawson. “It’d be good to ask him about how he developed his career from where we are now.”
But Lawson’s main focus for the weekend will be on closing the points gap to leader Zendeli over the two F4 races on the Formula One under-card. The pair are separated by 21 points with 8 races remaining in the season.
In the build-up to the Hockenheim GP meeting, Lawson tested two weeks ago. He finished second-fastest to Zendeli by one-tenth of a second in his Turners-backed car.
“The biggest challenge I see for us is adapting to the track as the weekend goes on, because of the amount of rubber the F1 cars will leave on the track. We might have a fast car in practice but it could be all different come qualifying. We’ve had this racing with the DTM cars this season.
“I think the fastest ones will be those that can adapt to the track and adopt different lines,” said Lawson, who drivers for Dutch based Van Amersfoort Racing.
This will be the second time the Formula 4 cars have been to Hockenheim this season, and they return again in September for the championship finale.
“The first time we raced there [Hockenheim] we were a bit off the pace as a team, but at the recent test we made some good gains so it’ll be interesting to see how strong we are this weekend.”
Last time at Hockenheim in May, Lawson scored a pair of second-place finishes and was sixth in the reverse grid race.