Liam Lawson has told how he and Yuki Tsunoda, his current teammate at RB F1, discovered each other in 2019 when they were young recruits at the Red Bull academy. The New Zealander reveals that he had trouble with the man who was his teammate at the time and who seemed to want to intimidate him.
“Yuki used to do this thing, the first year we were teammates was 2019” Lawson explained. “In FIA F3 we weren’t together, but we did the Euroformula Open at the same time, and we were teammates. I got to know him well.”
“All year long, during a practice session or in qualifying, every time I did a cool-down lap, Yuki would pass me and always insisted on getting as close to me as possible. I don’t know if He was trying to scare me or something. He’s been doing that all year.”
A tactic that cost both drivers dearly in Macau, where Tsunoda hit Lawson and ended his race in the guardrails: “We went to Macau, it’s crazy, it’s very bumpy and it’s borderline not believing you’re racing there.”
“Helmut [Marko] calls both of us and says ‘whatever you do, don’t crash in the first session because you need time on the track to prepare for qualifying. Don’t crash!'”
“The very first lap I do, I finish it, cool down, and see Yuki coming in the rearview mirror. I try to get out of his way, but I hit a brick wall.”
“As he passes me, he grabs my front wheel, flies off and goes straight into the barrier. The gearbox came loose from the rear, [il] destroyed the car. He also broke my front suspension, which took me out of the session.”
“I remember thinking ‘I know exactly what you did’. No one else knows. Everyone thinks we had a little clumsy accident. But I know what he did. I know that he tried to approach and obviously hit a fucking bump because it’s Macau and he misjudged it.”
Another memory from that day allows Lawson to be convinced that Tsunoda was doing it on purpose: “I saw him in the elevator that night. I remember the elevator doors opening the first time I saw him, and he was standing there, and I looked at him . He smiled at me and I knew straight away that he knew exactly what he had done.”
