Sander Dorsman, who was both Liam Lawson and Franco Colapinto’s team boss at MP Motorsport, believes the two youngsters have shown teams why it’s good to “take a risk” sometimes.

Last Lawson made his Formula 1 debut when substituted for Daniel Ricciardo in five races, starting with the Dutch GP, and scored points in his third race despite previous VCARB driver Nyck de Vries failing to break his duck in 10 races while Ricciardo was also without a point at that stage.

F1 teams applauded for taking a ‘risk’ on young drivers

The Kiwi impressed and while he was only retained as a reserve driver for this year’s championship, he’ll have an opportunity to shine as he’s replacing Ricciardo for the final six races of the championship.

He’ll join Colapinto, who also raced in F3 with Formula 3 Championship, on the Austin grid with the Argentinian in at Williams having replaced Logan Sargeant. As with Lawson a year earlier, Colapinto too has been shining as he scored points in his second race.

Dorsman says the youngsters are showing the teams they’re worth taking a risk on.

“I have to laugh, because what Franco is doing now, Liam did last year of course,” he told Motorsport.com. “Just blindly get in and go.

“I think this shows that Formula 2 is just a fantastic training ground for Formula 1. And that some teams, instead of always going for the safe names, are allowed to take a risk every now and then.”

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The MP Motorsport team boss revealed how Lawson came to race for his team after Dorsman phoned Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko and told him he wanted then-16-year-old Kiwi in his team. Marko made it happen.

“We were already keeping a pretty close eye on him, in 2018 he was actually doing really well in Formula 4,” Dorsman told Motorsport.com. “So we already had him in our sights a bit and we had already spoken to his manager a few times.

“Then we heard the rumour that Red Bull were going to sign him. That was in the winter [of 2018].

“I then called Helmut Marko and said ‘I want him’ and then it was arranged within a day. That’s always the nice thing about Helmut, I know what he wants and he never has to think about it for long.

“We signed him for Formula 3, which was actually a huge step for him. Because he had only done a year of Formula 4 in Europe, so he was still pretty wet behind the ears.

“That year we also had Richard Verschoor with us in F3 and those two were able to fight each other really well all year long. It was a really nice and good season.”

“That year was a steep learning curve for Liam,” he added. “But it just went really well. I don’t remember exactly where we finished, but in the top ten at least [the team finished sixth, ed.]. He really was the real deal and you could see that in the years in Formula 2 where he simply did a good job.”

Lawson will return to the F1 grid at the United States Grand Prix, handed six races in which to secure a place on the F1 2025 grid with VCARB, or some reports suggest even Red Bull.

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