MOTORSPORT: Teen’s tears turn to joy

A teenage Australian open-wheeler driver has won a race in Europe against 35 other youngsters, all with the dream of making Formula One.

Joey Mawson, 19, from Sydney but with Peruvian ancestry, would have had 36 rivals in the race except that a teammate, Michael Schumacher’s son Mick, had been sidelined earlier in the event after a crash in which he broke one of his wrists.

It was a round of a German championship but held at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, where Daniel Ricciardo will race in a Grand Prix in a few days.

Mawson and 16-year-old Schumacher drive for Dutch team Van Amersfoort Racing in Formula 4, the new global junior open-wheeler category that will debut in Australia in a month at the Townsville round of the V8 Supercar Championship.

Late last year, battler Mawson was in tears after his mate Schumacher sprayed champagne over his driving suit on a podium in France and he didn’t have a spare, clean set of overalls for the next day’s racing.

The Maserati Club of Australia – through the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport Foundation, which has supported Mawson for some time – came to the party and bought Mawson a new driving suit.

He had already finished second to Schumacher in a race this season at Oschersleben in Germany and was unlucky not to have won.

At the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, victory came his way in a chaotic race shortened after multiple crashes, one of them involving the Ferrari Academy’s Chinese prospect Guan Yu Zhuo, who has just turned 16 and is driving for the Prema Powerteam where Australian Ryan Briscoe had great success more than a decade ago.

Mawson had two pole positions at the Austrian event, one on merit, which he “blew” when he stalled on the grid for the second race of the round, and the other courtesy of a tenth-place finish on Saturday, after which the order of the top 10 was reversed in forming the grid for Sunday’s third and final race.

“My first race win in the ADAC Formel 4 (German Formula 4 Championship) – incredible,” Mawson said.

“This victory is for my teammate Mick [Schumacher]. I hope he makes a speedy recovery.

“At the start I sustained some tyre damage. It was lucky for me that the race was interrupted and that we were able to change the tyre.

“After the restart I was having problems getting the tyres up to temperature. I was struggling with understeer and sliding all over the place.

“Janneau (Dutch driver Janneau Esmeijer) was really fast and was closing in on me. We had some enjoyable scraps, but fortunately I was able to keep him behind me.

“It had been an up and down day for me. Starting on pole for two races I was confident of a good result, but I stalled on the line for the first race.

“Luckily no one collected me from behind, but I dropped to last.

“In eight laps I had gone from 37th to 22nd, but then spun avoiding a car in front of me and that was the end of my race.

“Race three [of the weekend] I made a reasonable start to get to the lead, the race was red-flagged after just one lap when there was a big crash behind.

“The race was reduced to 15 minutes [racing time] instead of the original 30.

“I led the race from the restart until another safety car and following red-flag came out three minutes from the end (after seven laps of racing).

“It felt great to be on top of the podium and thank-you to everyone for their support, especially my sponsors.”

Mawson is third in the championship with 64 points to the 74 of Swede Joel Eriksson and 73 of German Marvin Dienst. Mick Schumacher is ninth on 28 points, with the next round at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium on June 19-21.