(Motorsport-Total.com) – Max Verstappen is competing in this year’s Nürburgring 24-hour race, Lance Stroll recently made his debut in a GT3 car – and now Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson could also (once again) let loose outside of the premier class.
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The Australian medium MotorRacing360 reports that the New Zealander has been contacted by several teams from the Australian Supercars series to compete in the upcoming races in Taupo and Christchurch.
Although such an appearance would have been possible due to the five-week race break in Formula 1, Lawson declines. “I landed in New Zealand and my phone exploded with messages like: ‘Oh Liam, you’re driving Supercars next week’ – and I thought to myself: ‘I didn’t even know I was driving Supercars next week.'”
“So I don’t really know why everyone else seems to know that I’m driving a Supercar next week,” explains the Formula 1 driver in an interview with several media outlets, including Motorsport.com, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com within the Motorsport Network.
Lawson does not rule out Supercars participation
“But yeah, it was a pretty cool idea,” Lawson smiles, leaving the door open for a future start. “It’s obviously a series I grew up with, and I would definitely like to drive it at some point.”
“Maybe when my life isn’t so heavily focused on one thing and I actually have the time to properly prepare for it – that would be cool,” adds the current Racing Bulls driver. “But yeah, there’s obviously nothing to the rumors.”
However, an excursion into other racing series would not be entirely new for the 24-year-old New Zealander: Lawson was runner-up in both DTM (2021) and Super Formula (2023) and also won the New Zealand Grand Prix in 2019.
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Is he generally aiming for more appearances outside of Formula 1? “Definitely, I’ve done that in the past and loved it. I think that level of adaptability is always good, and I’m lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to do so since a very young age.”
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“Supercars in particular is something I’ve always watched, and I think the series is great. They do a very good job of keeping the cars raw – they still have naturally aspirated V8 engines, sequential gearboxes that they don’t deviate from, they don’t switch to paddle-shift systems or similar things.”
“They manage everything themselves, and I think that’s just a very cool thing,” says Lawson. “The racing is also really, really good. So I really like the series, it’s something I’d love to do. I’ve driven the car a few times and just had a blast.”
“But also other series: I drove DTM a few years ago and enjoyed it,” says the New Zealander, who lost the title to Mercedes driver Maximilian Götz in a controversial final. “I hated how it ended, but I enjoyed the season and working with a different team in a very different series.”
“[As a driver, you can] be a bit more aggressive, make divebombs, slam doors – things like that, which we can’t do too often in Formula 1. That was really fun,” Lawson admits. “I always try to do things like that, even if it’s in other sports. I also ride a lot of dirt bikes and enjoy that.”
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