Slick driving does the trick for Lawson
Liam Lawson claimed his second Formula Two victory of the season, and third of his career, after producing a gutsy pass on fellow New Zealander Marcus Armstrong in the sprint race in France yesterday.
The 20-year-old Carlin driver dropped from second to third place behind his compatriot at the start of the race at Le Castellet, but Lawson kept in touch and made a late lunge into turn one on lap four.
Somehow the pair avoided contact, by mere millimetres, and with his audacious dive, Lawson turned the outside line into the inside line on corner exit.
After a mid-race safety car, Lawson then closed the gap on leader Jehan Daruvala, with DRS enabled, repeating his earlier overtaking move in passing the Indian with five laps to go.
In quickly dashing clear, Lawson escaped the DRS range of his closest pursuer, and went on to win by more than three seconds from second-placed Daruvala, with Armstrong slipping to 14th in the 18-car field.
Reflecting on his brilliant pass of his fellow Kiwi, Lawson was still coming to grips with it soon after the race.
‘‘Honestly, I gave myself a fright when I went to lunge on the inside,’’ he said.
‘‘I wasn’t expecting to brake so early, so I kind of was half avoiding, half going for it. But I realised very quickly that we had a good car, especially on brakes, and through that sector I was able to get quite close to use DRS, so thanks to Carlin and everybody for making it possible, it was a good race.’’
Despite his triumph, which pushes Lawson to sixth in the series standings, one place ahead of Armstrong, he was realistic about the improvements required heading into the feature race today.
‘‘First things first, I need to sort my starts,’’ he said.
‘‘If you have a perfect start, you can easily jump an entire row if not more. So, the goal tomorrow is trying to get a good start. If we can move forward in the first lap, that’s the target.
‘‘We showed today that overtaking is possible for us. So, if the speed is there again, which I believe [will be], we can potentially make some moves during the race.’’