For someone who had spent his racing career in single seaters until this year, Liam Lawson has rattled a few cages in the DTM Championship.
DTM is one of the best GT series anywhere in the world and is full of highly-regarded and talented drivers, and for Lawson to beleading the championship is no mean feat. On 206 points, he has a 14-point lead over Kelvin van der Linde heading into this weekend's last round at Norisring, Germany.
It has been a standout year for the GT rookie, having made the podium in nine of his 14 races, including three wins. What's even more impressive, is that Lawson is also doing double duty in Formula 2 as a Red Bull junior driver.
"It's been pretty cool this year and we've worked really hard as a team," Lawson told the Weekend Herald from Germany.
"AF Corse [Ferrari works team] have been really cool to work with and right from the start of the year have done a lot of development every weekend with Ferrari and basically give us the right package each race.
"It's a different style of racing. It was something I wasn't ready for in the first few races. I can remember in a drivers' briefing they were talking about rules. In F2, you have to give racing space for people in corners if you're next to them, but in GT racing, you can bang doors and sort of get away with it. At the start of the year, it was an eye-opener and I got bashed around a little bit."
It didn't take Lawson long to get the hang of GT racing and now he gives as good as he gets. He will have his work cut out at Norisring, though, as the track isn't best suited to his Ferrari 488 GT3. And on top of that, drivers get a weight penalty when they win to keep the racing interesting.
"We've got a 14-point lead, which is quite small. It'll be really tough. The thing about GT racing, and it's something I have to get used to, is the success ballast.
"If you finish top three, you get extra weight in the car: first gets 25kg, second 18kg and third 15kg.
"Early in the season, I had a race in Monza where I won the first race, had 25kg for the next day and I wasn't ready for how much slower I'd be. I was fighting cars and ended up spinning and crashing. It didn't need to happen and I learned from it," he said.
Liam Lawson racing. Photo / Getty
Having raced a GT only once before in New Zealand, jumping from an F2 car into a tin top would normally take a bit of adjustment. Not for Lawson. Despite being different sorts of racing cars, the Kiwi made an instant impression in the championship, and he is grateful for the help he had from his Red Bull teammate.
"One of things that has taught me a lot has been being alongside Alex Albon. He has been in Formula 1 and his feedback [to engineers, mechanics and the like] has been very instructional.
"It was quite different [the Ferrari GT car] and took a bit of time to get used to. In fact, the way I started driving the car at the start of the season wasn't quite there, especially in the braking phases.
"All the GT cars have ABS similar to what you have in a road car, but we can fine-tune how it works in our cars. At the start of the year, I was braking how I would in a single seater, which is quite different, and during the season, I've developed a different style of braking and that's why we've gotten quicker over the season. It definitely took a while to get used to, that's for sure."
Albon is in Turkey this weekend as a replacement driver for the Red Bull F1 team. Fellow Kiwi Nick Cassidy will take over the AlphaTauri Ferrari for the first time. He knows Norisring from his Formula 3 days in 2013 and 2016 and that track knowledge will help Lawson.
While his mind will be fully focused on this weekend's two races and trying to become the youngest driver to win the DTM championship, Lawson still has two more rounds of his F2 series to complete at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Yas Island, Abu Dhabi.
It's been an up-and-down season for the 19-year-old, who has won two races — albeit one was taken away due to a technicality — but has struggled in others. He sits eighth in the standings, 98 points behind leader Australian Oscar Piastri, but has shown enough this year to earn a Formula One test drive.
"In F2, it's a bit different from racing in DTM, as we have very little track time and you don't get very far away from where you start [with the car setup].
"Obviously every time I get in the car, I'll be going flat out and scoring the best results I can.
"It's so hard to be consistent on a race weekend with the reverse grid races on Saturday and the massive breaks between races, which has meant it's like surviving Saturday to be in a good position for Sunday.
"Monaco [the race win taken away] is probably the lowest point of my career so far.
"At least I got to display the on-track stuff [the capability to pass and win on a demanding track] and we won."
Lawson starts the weekend with a slight disadvantage, having to carry an extra 18kg in his car after finishing second last time out.
Title challengers van der Linde and Marco Wittman have no ballast for the opening race.
