Multiple cars airborne in massive first-lap pile-up in the Super Formula racing series featuring Red Bull junior

Red Bull junior driver Liam Lawson was involved in a massive crash in the Motegi Super Formula race on Sunday.

The Kiwi was very excited after his P3 finish on the grid ending up within 0.282s of teammate Tomoki Nojiri's pole time. Lawson quickly moved up a position at the start of the race after Kakunoshin Ota stalled on the grid in P2.

The Red Bull junior driver went side-by-side with his teammate in his bid to get the first place. The two Mugen drivers ran side-by-side into Turn 2, with Lawson running wide and over the kerbs at the exit of the corner. As per Motorsport.com, Lawson ran wide coming out of the exit of the corner and spun and came back on the track which caused other drivers to crash into him.

He collected the cars of Tadasuke Makino and Yuhi Sekiguchi and sent both airbone in the contact. Nobuharu Matsushita also got caught up in the melee after going wide over the track in a bid to avoid the incident. The incident brought out the red flag immediately with the Red Bull junior hobbling his way back to the pits and blaming his teammate for the incident.

---

Red Bull junior gives his take on continuing racing in the Super Formula

Liam Lawson is currently in contention to make his F1 debut with AlphaTauri next season if he impresses the Red Bull heirarchy.

But as per RacingNews365, while comparing the Super Formula Series to F1 categories, Liam Lawson said:

“You’re racing a lot older guys, quite often there’s a much higher level of respect between drivers. In Formula 2 and Formula 3, we’re all obviously trying to achieve the same goal, and with how difficult it is to land a seat in F1 at the moment, you’re sort of fighting over that one or two seats that will never become available anyway."

“So everybody’s very much against each other [in Europe] whereas in Super Formula, I’m sort of there in a different way than people. There’s a [higher] level or respect between the drivers having made it whereas for me, I’m obviously trying to use it as a stepping stone, so I don’t feel in such competition with them if that makes sense.”

It will be interesting to see if Lawson can eventually make his F1 debut next season or will have to wait a bit longer.