Liam Lawson is hunting for lap time in an unlikely place: the streets of Formula E.
As Racing Bulls rolled out its VCARB03 livery, the Kiwi admitted he’s leaning on compatriot and close friend Nick Cassidy to sharpen his feel for energy deployment ahead of F1’s increasingly electric future. In Lawson’s words, Cassidy’s “probably the best at it” — and if you watched the Mexico City E‑Prix, you know he’s not exaggerating.
Cassidy carved through the pack from 13th to win with a textbook display of energy management and attack‑mode timing. That’s the stuff Formula E specialists make look routine and F1 drivers rarely have to think about minute-to-minute — at least not yet. With F1 power units moving toward a roughly 50/50 split between the internal combustion engine and electrical power, the sport is teeing up an era where how you harvest and spend energy matters as much as the size of your right foot.
Lawson’s taking notes. He was back home in New Zealand recently, golf clubs in hand, glued to a stream of Cassidy’s Mexico charge. The plan now is simple: pick Cassidy’s brain through the winter and turn those lessons into points when the lights go out.
The theory isn’t complicated, but the craft is. Next‑gen F1 racing is expected to push drivers to juggle a richer palette of tools: an ‘overtake’ mode that unleashes more power when you’re within range, and a separate ‘boost’ from the MGU‑K that can be fired anywhere to punch a lap time or defend track position. Use them smartly, you sail past. Use them clumsily, you’re a sitting duck — or worse, stuck outside that crucial one‑second window when it counts.
It’s no surprise the sport’s power brokers are already talking up the driver’s role. Helmut Marko has hinted that reading the energy game could separate the great from the merely good; Toto Wolff has suggested the “intelligent way of managing the energy” will suit the sharpest race brains. Translation: execution will matter, a lot.
That’s where Cassidy comes in for Lawson. Few categories punish inefficiency like Formula E, and the Mexico example was the perfect case study in patience meeting precision. For a driver trying to get ahead of the curve in F1’s new rhythm of lift-and-send, feather-and-fire, there are worse tutors than a Kiwi who just schooled a world-class grid in energy chess.
For Lawson, it’s also about feel. Racing Bulls need a driver who can improvise at 300 km/h, not just hit delta times. Energy management isn’t a spreadsheet exercise; it’s a living thing that changes corner to corner, lap to lap, with traffic and temps and the ebb and flow of a grand prix. Cassidy’s edge isn’t mystical — it’s a thousand micro-decisions stitched together under pressure.
Racing Bulls, for their part, have been bullish about giving Lawson the tools to show that touch. The VCARB03 is the team’s clearest statement yet about where it wants to be in the midfield dogfight, and Lawson’s winter homework suggests he’s not waiting around for the regulations to make him better. He’s banking knowledge early.
There’s also a wider, quietly fascinating thread here: the cross‑pollination between series. F1 is moving toward a world where “battery craft” will be as prized as apex speed. Formula E lives there already. The best drivers will take whatever edge they can get — from sim work, from endurance racing, from phone calls with a mate who just turned 13th on the grid into a winner’s trophy by spending electrons smarter than everyone else.
So, no, Lawson won’t suddenly drive like a Formula E champion because he’s watched a few onboard laps. But this is how you close gaps in modern Formula 1: find margins others ignore, then practice them until they’re instinct. If the coming seasons reward brains with the same ferocity they reward bravery, Lawson’s choice of tutor looks inspired.
Two Kiwis, one idea: in the next phase of F1, power isn’t just what you have. It’s how you use it. And Lawson’s doing his homework.
