Red Bull driver FURIOUS with team-mate following HUGE crash

Horner, Red Bull Racing, Silverstone — Photo: © LAT Images

Liam Lawson

Red Bull driver FURIOUS with team-mate following HUGE crash

Liam Lawson has been touted for a future F1 seat

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Sunday 20 August 2023 22:42

Liam Lawson has been involved in a huge crash in the Super Formula championship, with the Red Bull junior driver left feeling furious at his team-mate.

The crash happened on lap one of the race at Motegi as Lawson got onto the kerb attempting an around-the-outside manoeuvre on team-mate Tomoki Nojiri.

He then spun round into the path of several other cars, causing a huge crash in which a couple of cars ended up airborne. Thankfully, all drivers were ok, and the race was able to be resumed.

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Cars go airborne at Motegi! ? Drivers are OK!

? Watch the race restart live on https://t.co/SzQiOomZen at https://t.co/QUWTg9WKYs #SUPERFORMULA #SFormula #Motorsport #SFjp #trd #HRC #HONDA #TOYOTA pic.twitter.com/oG2p4nX43o
— Motorsport.tv (@MotorsportTV_UK) August 20, 2023

After the race, Lawson told Motorsport.com “Looking back, maybe I was too aggressive and I should have stayed second. But I’m a racing driver, so I always go for a gap.

“It was aggressive, I stand by [saying that I was] pushed off. It’s a long corner, and from the entry of the corner, I had wheels alongside. As we went further round the corner, I continued to move alongside, I was gaining and gaining. When you race against different drivers, you have an idea of how people race.

“On certain drivers, I wouldn’t go for that kind of move. But on Nojiri, normally I would go for it based on how he’s raced me this year.

“But because it’s two races to go and he needed to make up points, maybe he was more aggressive today. To be honest, I didn’t expect it. Lap one, looking back, I should have just left it, but at the time I felt I had been pushed off.

“You have incidents all the time when but’s not your fault, but you could have done something differently to avoid it. I didn’t drive myself off the track, but maybe I was too aggressive.”

Lawson's title chances hang by a thread

Lawson is a junior driver at Red Bull, and has been touted for a potential future seat in Formula One.

Winning the Super Formula championship would certainly help his cause, and he was in a great position to do so before this race.

However, his eventual 13th place finish means that, with just one race left in the season, Lawson is eight points behind Ritomo Mayata, with his team-mate a further two points back.

Despite the incident, Lawson did reveal that he had cleared the air with Nojiri.

“Initially I was upset because of the incident and the points situation, but after being his team-mate this long, I know he’s a very good person,” he said.

“I have a lot of respect for him and I know he wouldn’t intentionally push me off or cause an accident. Maybe he thought he had left me more space, but from my side I could have backed out and played it safer. We spoke and everything is ok.”

Written by

Sam Cook - Digital Journalist

Sam Cook is a talented young sports journalist and social media professional who now specialises in Formula 1, having previously worked as a football journalist and a local news reporter for a variety of different brands.

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