But after an up-and-down campaign that yielded three wins in nine races but only one other visit to the podium, Lawson fell eight points shy of champion Ritomo Miyata in the end.
Here, we look back at the moments throughout the season where Lawson lost out - partly through a mixture of small mistakes either by him or the team, or just sheer bad luck.
Fuji Round 2 - safety car and penalty frustration
The honeymoon of Lawson’s sensational debut win at Fuji didn’t last long, as the very next day he finished third behind Tomoki Nojiri and Sho Tsuboi, only to get penalised for a safety car infringement that dropped him down to fifth, a place behind Miyata.
Lawson suffered the misfortune of being the second Mugen car in line when the safety car was called on lap eight, just two laps before the pit window opened. This prompted the entire field to come into the pits in unison, but Lawson was picked up for trying to create a gap that would allow Mugen to service both he and Nojiri without losing time.
The punishment was a five-second time penalty that cost him five points (while gifting Miyata an extra two). Had Lawson followed the rules to the letter, he may have ended up giving away even more positions, but either way, this was simply dumb luck for the Kiwi.
VERDICT: Bad luck
Suzuka Round 3 - safety car paves way for Toyota romp
The safety car again came out at the wrong time for Lawson two weeks later at Suzuka. The Red Bull junior was second behind Tsuboi when Nojiri rear-ended Toshiki Oyu to bring out the caution, resulting in Miyata, Ryo Hirakawa and others getting a cheap pitstop.
For the restart, Lawson was on old tyres and powerless to prevent Miyata from coming through for second, and the TOM’S driver would eventually pick off Tsuboi for a first win. Later, Lawson would concede another position to Impul man Hirakawa, slipping to fourth.
Lawson admitted after the race that he may have been a bit too conservative in his defence, especially against Hirakawa, but again, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that a badly-timed caution saw seven points go begging, as well as hugely benefitting Miyata.
VERDICT: Mostly bad luck
Sugo Round 5 - communication mix-up leads to doomed strategy
After bouncing back from his Suzuka misfortune with a win at Autopolis, Lawson perhaps suffered the first major setback of his sensational rookie season next time out at Sugo. On the hardest track of all for newcomers to master, Lawson only qualified sixth, but his pace was such that he deserved to finish much higher than fifth in the race.
Miyata wrong-footed the opposition by pitting from the lead on lap 17 of 51, while Lawson was stuck behind Tsuboi. Lawson was under the misapprehension that Miyata would be having to deal with traffic of his own after stopping relatively early, when in reality he was carving huge chunks of time out of Tsuboi and Lawson.
Equally, Lawson’s engineer Tomo Koike had misunderstood that Lawson wanted a strategy to beat Miyata at all costs, instead of one aimed at the championship. That explains the call to leave out the Kiwi as late as lap 41, by which time he had been undercut by no fewer than six drivers. Despite his electric pace on new tyres, fifth was all Lawson could do.
VERDICT: Mistake (blame shared by driver and team)
Motegi Round 7 - first-lap crash hands Miyata initiative
If you were to point to any particular moment that decided the title in favour of Miyata, it has to be the penultimate weekend of the year at Motegi in late August. This was the scene of Lawson’s doomed around-the-outside pass on Nojiri at Turn 2, which led him to ride up on the kerbs, spin and get collected by the pack. Cue a huge melee and red flags.
While condemning Lawson to his first and only non-score of the year, the stoppage was equally a massive get-out-of-jail-free card for TOM’S man Miyata, who had only been able to qualify eighth and then stalled, dropping virtually to last in the process.
While Miyata had serious pace when the race was resumed, putting on an overtaking clinic, the fact that four quick cars were eliminated on the spot in the crash was key to his eventual rise to fourth. Lawson meanwhile was left to rue not being more circumspect in his battle with Nojiri - even second place would have put him in prime position to win the title.
VERDICT: Mistake
Suzuka Round 8 - red flags come at just the wrong time
Even after the Motegi crash, Lawson still went into the Suzuka weekend arguably as the favourite despite his eight-point deficit to Miyata, based on likely qualifying form and his strong race pace at the same track in April. But one side effect of the incident was that it left him with one fewer set of fresh ‘carry over’ tyres from Motegi compared to his rivals.
This became apparent when the red flags during Q2 on Saturday after Ren Sato’s crash, and Miyata and Nojiri both equipped fresh tyres for the restart (although Nojiri’s were lightly scrubbed). Lawson meanwhile had no option but to go back out on the tyres he had just used, and as a result he couldn’t do any more than seventh.
Lawson later explained that the red flags came out when he was coming up to the chicane on his flying lap, and that he had been dead even with Nojiri up to that point. He therefore reasoned he should have started no lower than second.
Sunday’s qualifying session, where Lawson annexed pole, proved his speed. Instead, he found himself out of position and then out of time when the huge 130R crash involving Ukyo Sasahara and Hiroki Otsu cut the race short and left him sixth in the final classification.
VERDICT: Bad luck
