Red Bull Formula 1 junior Lawson was classified sixth in Saturday’s penultimate round of the season, with the results declared after just three laps due to a stoppage caused by a terrifying crash between Hiroki Otsu and Ukyo Sasahara at 130R.
It followed a difficult qualifying session for the Mugen driver in which he could set only the seventh-fastest time while his title rivals Ritomo Miyata and Tomoki Nojiri qualified on the front row.
Explaining his plight afterwards, Lawson said he felt the lap he was on at the time of Ren Sato's crash at Degner Curve that brought out the red flags would have put him as high as second on the grid.
While the session was eventually resumed, Lawson didn’t have any fresh tyres to put on like his rivals, a legacy of his Motegi crash in August, leaving him six tenths off Nojiri’s pole time.
He said: “Qualifying was obviously frustrating. We had done 95% of the lap and then a red flag came out, and everybody else had spare tyres and I didn't have spare tyres, so I had to reuse the same set of tyres.
"It obviously put us out of position. It's a shame to be honest because the qualifying lap was really good before the red flag."
Asked by Autosport where he could have qualified had he been able to complete the lap, Lawson said the dashboard on his car showed he had sent an identical time to Nojiri until that point of the track.
“I was 0.0s with Tomoki before the chicane," he said. "Let's say if I have a bad chicane, I lose a tenth, it's P2,” he said.
Source: Autosport