Liam Lawson says he wasn’t given time to prove himself at Red Bull Racing before his brutal sacking just two rounds into the season.
Lawson was drafted up from Racing Bulls to replace the out-of-favour Sergio Pérez this season, but dire results at the opening Australian and Chinese grands prix convinced Red Bull Racing management to make an emergency change, sending him back to Faenza in exchange for Yuki Tsunoda.
It was a ruthlessly early move on the Kiwi, who had started just 13 races when he was dropped ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.
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Speaking to the F1 website at the halfway mark of the season, Lawson argued that while he accepted his results were poor, he was never given a chance to prove his underperformance was down to insufficient preparation rather than skill.
“I was well aware that those results weren’t good enough, but I was just focused on improving, fixing and learning, basically,” he said. “I was in the same mindset as I have been since I came into F1.
“I think that was the biggest thing going into a team like that, in a car like that it was going to take a bit of time to adjust [to] and learn.
“With no proper testing, the issues in testing, the issues in Melbourne through practice, it wasn’t smooth and clean.
“I needed time, and I wasn’t given it.”
Tsunoda’s struggles in his seat have cast Lawson’s difficulties in a new light. While the Kiwi’s results were considerably poorer, the well-regarded Japanese driver has yet to make a breakthrough with the difficult RB21.
On average his results have been similar to those that had Pérez sent packing with two years to run on his contract at the end of last year.
But the fact Tsunoda has been unable to perform — despite having been in sizzling form at Racing Bulls in 2024 and the first two rounds of 2025 — has finally forced the team to reckon with a more deeply seated problem than just its second driver.
For years the design department has developed an increasingly niche car. Verstappen, his abilities preternatural, has been able to master it, but the mere mortal drivers partnered with him have endured greater and greater difficulties behind the wheel.
This year even Verstappen has been unable to deliver consistent performances in the car, completing the team’s rapid descent from dominant title winner in 2023 to also-ran just two years later.
Tsunoda will be given at least until the end of the season, after which the prevalent assumption is he’ll be moved on, though a fresh tack under new principal Laurent Mekies could yet change the game.
The subsequent events reframed Lawson’s struggles — and not just his; Pérez, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly could all claim some credit back here — in less harsh terms.
It’s cold comfort for the Kiwi, however, whose career flipped from dazzlingly ascendant to alarmingly precarious less than a fortnight into the season.
With Red Bull’s next young gun, Arvid Lindblad, in line for promotion to Formula 1 next season, what should have been a dream season could yet turn into a nightmare.
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NO LOSS OF CONFIDENCE
Despite Christian Horner, the then Red Bull Racing principal, having claimed Lawson’s demotion was and exercise in its “duty of care to protect and develop Liam”, his results remained stubbornly unimpressive upon his return to Racing Bulls.
There are several elements that have gone into making him look more ordinary than expected.
One is the acclimatisation process. Being thrown from one car to another in the middle of the season is always difficult, and after having struggled with an interrupted pre-season program at Red Bull Racing, having no pre-season at all with Racing Bulls made that challenge steeper.
The other is that his teammate, Isack Hadjar, is arguably the standout rookie of the season. The Frenchman has been especially impressive in qualifying, and given the tightness of the midfield, that’s made his Sunday results more impressive too.
Liam Lawson’s vital statistics, rounds 3 to 12
Qualifying result: 13.7 average
Qualifying head to head: Hadjar ahead 2-8
Qualifying differential: Hadjar ahead 3.4 places
Time differential: Hadjar ahead 0.279 seconds
Race result: 12.0 average
Race head to head: Hadjar ahead 1-7
Race differential: Hadjar ahead 2.7 places
Points: Hadjar ahead 12-21
It’s been easy to conclude a third reason — that Lawson, after being chewed up and spat out by one of F1’s grandees in just two grands prix, has had his confidence shattered.
Pérez, after all, looked like a broken man in his final months at Red Bull Racing.
Lawson, however, denies that psychology has played a role.
“I haven’t really talked much about it because I think for a big part of this year I’ve just ignored everything that happened and I’ve just focused on trying to drive the car, but I know there was a lot of stuff that went out that was speculation about how I was feeling,” he said.
“My confidence hasn’t changed since the start of the year to now.
“One thing to be clear about is that between the first couple of races, to the team switch, then going to Japan, mentally for me nothing changed.
“It’s been very heavily speculated that my confidence took a hit and stuff like this, which is completely false. From the start of the year I felt the same as I always have.
“I think in two races, on tracks I’d never been to, it’s not really enough for my confidence [to suffer].
“Maybe six months into a season if I’m still at that level, if the results are still like that, then I’d be feeling something, maybe my confidence would be taking a hit.”
And there are green shoots finally emerging in Lawson’s season to prove it.
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‘NO BREAKTHROUGHS, JUST GRADUAL BUILD-UP’
Hidden in the one-sided statistics relative to Hadjar are signs of real progress.
The qualifying margin between them is narrowing. Drawing a line of best fit through the gap demonstrates a 0.071-second trajectory of improvement for Lawson, and if you include only the European leg of the season — Imola onwards, including Canada — the trend is even steeper.
Lawson has also scored all 12 of his points during the European campaign, starting with four points for eighth in Monaco and then collecting eight points in a standout run to sixth in Austria, the round before last.
While he’s down 12-21 relative to Hadjar for the season, that difference drops to a more respectable 12-16 since the first race in Europe.
“I think recently, performance-wise, it’s been our strongest [phase],” he said. “The car’s been fast, and I’ve also been probably at a level that I wasn’t quite at before that.
“I would say there hasn’t been enough points scored, for sure. Austria was great, but it’s not enough. We need to be doing stuff like that as much as we can. I think the consistency is what’s been tough.
“Obviously the start of the year, the big shake-up with the team switch and then not really having the time to get to grips with things, racing every weekend, and trying to be at the level that I need to be at — it’s been a lot.”
Austria was a particularly impressive weekend.
It was just the second round at which Lawson outqualified Hadjar, beating him by 0.022 seconds on his way to his second Q3 appearance of the season, where he qualified a career-best sixth.
He held onto that position at the head of the midfield to the flag, beating Fernando Alonso to the place.
While it stands alone as a strong result, the races on either side of Austria were compromised — Canada by a cooling problem and Great Britain by a faultless first-lap crash.
It’s why Lawson didn’t describe his Red Bull Ring result as singularly significant but rather a reward for his incremental improvement.
“No breakthroughs, just gradual build-up,” he said. “Even from the first triple-header [Imola-Monaco-Spain] the speed was good. It wasn’t great, but it was quite good there. Since then it’s been in a pretty good place.
“We’ve gone to a lot of tracks — Monaco we were very strong in practice, Barcelona strong in practice, Canada strong in practice.
“Then you go to qualifying and little things make a difference. It’s not good enough, because the results haven’t been coming consistently enough, but the speed itself has been quite good.
“Why Austria was a great weekend was obviously just to have that breakthrough of points and I guess probably show a little bit of what’s been building for a while but also what needs to be coming more frequently.”
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RACING BULLS SEASON
While his margin to Hadjar will be crucial to any decision-making at the end of the season, Lawson’s ability to rack up Austria-like big results will be dictated by the quality of the machinery at his disposal.
Racing Bulls started the season as the fastest team in the six-car midfield including Williams, Aston Martin, Sauber, Haas and Alpine.
But it’s been second-best for much of the year since, first to Williams and more recently to Aston Martin.
Average gap to fastest midfield car, last five rounds
1. Aston Martin: 0.136
2. Racing Bulls: 0.200
3. Williams: 0.264
4. Alpine: 0.412
5. Haas: 0.435
6. Sauber: 0.599
But the scrap is close, and with theoretically only two points-paying places available for the midfielders on any given weekend — assuming all eight frontrunning drivers perform well — tiny differences can add up to significant scores over a season.
“I think [the goal] for us it’s just having more frequent, good races, not one-off races,” Lawson said. “It’s very, very hard, especially in the midfield, where you’re trying to have that edge over everybody else around you.
“You’re quite often fighting for [a few] points at the back end of the top 10, and occasionally when things are really good you get an Austria weekend, but it’s very hard to achieve that all the time.
“I would say a consistent run of points is what we’re looking for, to have [fewer] of these weekends where it’s little issues, being knocked out in Q1 and things like that.”
If Lawson can find the consistency for regular Q3 appearances alongside Hadjar, and if he can regularly snipe for points, he might give Red Bull management something to think about, especially while Lindblad searches for his own run of form in Formula 2.
That’ll be particularly important not just for him but for the team. Racing Bulls is currently seventh in the standings and tied on points with Aston Martin in eighth.
The rapidly improving Sauber is one place and seven points ahead, but more intriguing is Williams, which is 23 points up the road in fifth.
Racing Bulls has never finished higher than sixth in any guise, and with Williams having put its cue in the rack for development of this year’s car to benefit next year’s all-new design, it could be vulnerable in the second half of the season.
It’s a tall ask, but with half the season still to run, everything is on the table.
That applies to Lawson too.
He may not have got the time he deserved at Red Bull Racing to make an impression, but he has 12 more grands prix to state his case in a car capable of occasional big results.
The pressure’s on, but it’s up to him to prove he’s equal to the challenge.