Farewell Ferrari Finali Mondiali
At the end of November Liam was a special guest of Ferrari at the annual Finali Mondiali at Mugello, Italy.
The annual season-ending event hosts then finals the various Ferrari Challenge championships and is also a chance to parade past Formula 1 cars and the winning DTM Ferrari 488 GT3 cars.
“It was nice to have one last drive in the car. I was definitely not cruising around, I was pushing and having some fun,” said Liam afterwards.
Apart from driving his Red Bull 488 DTM car for the final time, Liam was a special guest at a black-tie dinner and the world launch of the brand new Ferrari Daytona.
At the dinner for over 1,000 people Liam was seated at the top table.
“I expected to go there just as a guest but to be seated with Piero Ferrari and his wife at the dinner was pretty special. On the Sunday I got a very nice surprise when they did a presentation for me and announced me as their DTM champion.”
It was also the opportunity for Liam to see his DTM team once again and enjoy a special farewell together.
“After Norisring everyone packed up and went their separate ways so it was nice to catch up with all the Ferrari guys again and have a proper send off.”
Reflecting on my year in DTM
Liam nearly pulled off the biggest upset in DTM history when he came agonisingly close to winning the 2021 championship. He had already become the youngest driver in DTM history when he won the opening race of the season, the first race win by an Italian manufacturer since Alfa Romeo won in 1966.
But what Liam and AF Corse achieved this year will go down in motorsport history. A story of how two Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo’s took on the might of the German manufacturers and almost won their series.
Prior to starting in the DTM championship Liam had only ever raced two saloons. He was the lead driver in the NZ Endurance Championship last year in a one-off drive in a V10-powered Audi R8, and finished third. And for fun, he drove a Toyota Levin in the budget 2K Cup - for cars purchased for less than $2,000. He won the final race starting from 43rd!
Liam was entered by Red Bull into the new-look DTM championship this year alongside F1 driver Alex Albon in a two-car AF Corse Ferrari team to supplement his main drive, the FIA Formula 2 championship.
Just as the call-up to drive a GT3 car came completely out of the blue, so did his debut race win.
“The 488 was completely different to anything I’d ever driven before. The biggest thing for me was getting used to the power steering, the steering is a lot lighter and also using ABS and traction control was new for me,” said Liam.
“It was my first experience with the manufacturer side of a championship, so we had a lot more freedom to develop the car within the regulations and I really liked that side of the racing.”
F2 cars have no power steering and are physically very demanding to drive.
“One of the biggest things I noticed was because this is a supercar everything felt really, really nice. Simple things like the gearbox changes were really smooth, really accurate. Not like dog-to-dog where you get miss-shifts and things like that. The way the power came in with the turbo was also really, really smooth.”
Unlike Formula 2, or most single-seater categories, where the cars have identical chassis’ with identical motors, in DTM there were cars from Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Lamborghini, McLaren and the two AF Corse Ferraris.
“It was my first experience with the manufacturer side of a cham- pionship, so we had a lot more freedom to develop the car within the regulations and I really liked that side of the racing. The debrief would have at least 6 or 7 Ferrari guys plus all the guys from AF Corse, so there’d be 10 to 15 guys in the debrief room going through everything. The technical side was really cool.”
Over this year they worked a lot on the 488’s braking performance “Because in DTM we run a little bit more power than in any other GT championships the brakes take a bit more work. When going through traffic we had to come up with different methods of saving the brakes.”
“One top of that, from my side, the driving side, earlier in the season when I first drove the car I was braking like in a single-seater, so very peaky. So I started to relax a lot more on the brake, a lot smoother with less peak pressure for a longer hold and I found it easier to pitch the car.”
“I don’t want to get too complicated but with the Ferrari all the aero is on the front splitter and this is really, really important to the way the car pitches, a bit like the front wing on our F2 car. The balance is quite sensitive to how you pitch the car in the entry to the corner and with this brake technique I got more and more consistent over the year and found it easier to pitch the car. And I got faster.”
Across the different manufacturers the 488 was very good in high speed corners but it struggled in the slow speed ones.
“Our car was very good in high speed corners, it sat very flat and the way the aero works was really nice. So that was always a strength for us but the one thing we struggled with all season was the slow speed corners, particularly when
“I’d love to work with Ferrari again. There were lots of funny moments also. Obviously the ribbing I got with my pink cap, then the pink hoodie.” the tyres went off. That was our biggest weakness over the season.”
For the young Kiwi, working with AF Corse and Ferrari has been a very special experience.
“Between AF Corse and Ferrari we formed a really great relationship. We started working with Ferrari from the first official test and I realised that every engineer, every me- chanic was super passionate and they really wanted to win which I really liked. They gave maximum effort every single time and I think we all had a pretty cool season, we really enjoyed it.”
“I’d love to work with Ferrari again. There were lots of funny moments also. Obviously the ribbing I got with my pink cap, then the pink hoodie. They got pink steering wheel grips for my car and a little pink mascot. Every time I came to the next round they’d have something to surprise me with.”
It may farewell to Ferrari for now, but Liam will always hold a piece of prancing horse in his heart.
AF Corse boss talks about the year with Liam
AF Corse Ferrari sporting director Ron Reichert knew even before Lawson’s sensational victory in the DTM season opener at Monza that he is dealing with a special driver.
“We have of course followed what Liam does,” said Reichert talking to ‘Motorsport-Total.com’. “But then he drove at the test in the car, and we were all speechless,” referring to the private test of AF Corse at Spa-Francorchamps in early April before the official tests at Hockenheim and at the Lausitzring.
When asked what distinguishes Liam from other drivers, Reichert replied:
“Liam’s strength is his ambition. He’s not here for fun or deliver to party, but to drive a car fast.”
How does that manifest itself? “He calls in the middle of the week and says, ‘I’ve looked at over and over again my on-board... And then he comes to the smallest details, he makes a lot of questions to the engineers.”
“Between the race weekends, he sits and studied what happened during the race weekend, he looks at the on-boards of the other drivers and says, ‘He has a selected bit of a different line. What could we have done better? He is very unusual, especially for his age.”
Yet another virtue that characterises Liam, according to Reichert, his honesty. “Liam has never sought an excuse for anything. If he does something wrong, he is the first to say, ‘That I messed up’ He apologises - and honestly this I was very surprised.”
“In Milton Keynes, a long way from his home, this year he was completely on his own and is in a crucial stage of his career. He was thrown into the deep end. With a team, with whom he has never worked in Europe, because he can not go back to the family in New Zealand.”
“This is for a 19-year-olds not the easiest situation that you can imagine,” said Reichert. “And then just do not look for excuses, is very impressive to me.”