MOTORSPORT: High five for Aussie in Europe

Teenage Australian racer Joey Mawson has completed a stellar season in Germany with his fifth win.

Racing in fields of up to 36, Mawson was on the podium 11 times in 24 races in Germany’s first Formula 4 Championship.

The 19-year-old from Sydney narrowly missed out on second place in the championship, finishing just two points behind Swede Joel Eriksson.

German Marvin Dienst clinched the title in the first of the weekend’s three races at the Hockenheim circuit and ended the championship on 347 points to Eriksson’s 299 and Mawson’s 297.

The Aussie, who has some Peruvian ancestry, aspires to racing in Formula 1 but also wants to become a mechanical engineer.

One of Mawson’s three teammates in the Van Amersfoort Racing team, Mick Schumacher, the 16-year-old son of seven-time F1 world champion Michael Schumacher, finished 10th in the championship on 92 points.

Another Australian, 15-year-old Melbourne year 10 student Luis Leeds, raced at Hockenheim.

Leeds, who is third in the debut season of F4 in Australia behind Jordan Lloyd and Thomas Randle after four rounds, finished 26th, 18th and 11th in the three Hockenheim races.

Mawson was 10th (after a pit stop) and third in Saturday’s races but started from pole position on Sunday as the top 10 from the first race of a round are reversed on the grid for the final race.

It became Mawson’s third straight reverse-grid race win.
He led throughout but there was a lengthy red-flag clean-up after a crash and two safety car periods.

“The season couldn’t have ended better than with this win,” Mawson said.

“I just missed finishing runner-up in the championship, unfortunately.

“Going into this weekend I had set myself the target of finishing the season in second place.

“Still, I can't blame myself, because it was simply not possible to achieve more than first place [in the last race].

“Besides, Joel [Eriksson] had a really great race (finishing third from 17th on the grid) and thoroughly deserved his second place in the championship.

“Conditions were very tricky, because it was quite damp off the racing line and on the kerbs.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get to do much driving [because of the incidents], but the pace of my car was brilliant.”

Mawson won three national and 19 state titles as a karter – and was runner-up in a world championship – before his move to Europe.

The young Schumacher charged through the field in the final race at Hockenheim from 27th to seventh.

Schumacher finished directly behind Harrison Newey, the 17-year-old son of Adrian Newey, the most successful designer in the history of F1 and responsible for the Red Bull cars of Daniel Ricciardo and Mark Webber – and in which Sebastien Vettel won four straight world titles – in recent years.