Half-rookie Liam Lawson is Red Bull’s new hope

For the third part of a new mini-series where Motorsport.com is assessing the early Formula 1 careers of the six 2025 rookies, today we’re introducing a driver the championship already knows rather well: Liam Lawson.

In fact, with 11 race starts under his belt and three points finishes as a temporary AlphaTauri/Racing Bulls driver in 2023 and 2024, it’s quite a stretch to consider the New Zealander as F1 newbie.

But, this year was the first time he’s done a full pre-season and he heads to Melbourne as the only one of the ‘rookie’ crop without any experience of the Albert Park layout. The circuit was only added to the Formula 2 calendar after Lawson moved on to race in Super Formula in 2023.

“Surely I’m not – Antonelli, Doohan?” was his shocked initial reply when this was pointed out to him at F1 75 Live in London last month before the F2 point was made. “Oh no way. I am the only guy!”

Before F2, where he achieved a best result of third in 2022, Lawson was fifth in the 2020 Formula 3 championship. He dovetailed his 2021 F2 season with a DTM campaign that ended in a controversial defeat to Maximilian Gotz after two clashes instigated in lunges from his other title rival, Kelvin van der Linde. Lawson was also the Super Formula runner-up in 2023.

Liam Lawson, TEAM MUGEN

Photo by: Masahide Kamio

But even without these titles, he made a firm enough impression on Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and motorsport advisor Helmut Marko through that time that they continued advancing him up the chain.

It was his impressive performances replacing the injured Daniel Ricciardo in 2023, however, that ensured Lawson continued on the F1 path to this point.

And it’s clear from the latest series of ‘Drive to Survive’ that he took being overlooked for a full-time RB race drive in 2024 well/badly (delete as you see fit) to fire him on to keep impressing Horner and Marko even while on the sidelines.

That he hadn’t raced anything else in early 2024 before his Ricciardo-like Silverstone assessment day after the British Grand Prix last year shows how well he did to be just 0.2s off the benchmark time set by his new team-mate Max Verstappen.

Per Red Bull team insiders, Lawson’s tenacity was a considerable factor in his rapid promotion to that spot, once Sergio Perez’s goodwill earned with his driving in aid of Verstappen in 2021 had finally run out within that string of underwhelming results last year.

The Bahrain pre-season test did not go as Red Bull wanted overall – but this mainly centres on its struggles to find the ideal set-up for the RB21.

Lawson did complete the second-lowest lap count of the 20 drivers – although just six fewer than Verstappen’s 155, as the third lowest total – but his only whole day in the car came on the rain-disrupted second day. During this, an engine water pressure loss also cost him time to complete a race simulation.

Liam Lawson, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

But there was an interesting note from Horner in Bahrain, as he told F1 TV that Lawson was “working his way into the team and his feedback is good – it’s consistent with what Max is saying” on how their driving styles react with the new car’s handling.

This could be critical for Lawson’s long-term hopes of holding on to one of F1’s most-prized seats, given how Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Perez have struggled across the garage since Verstappen really hit his stride while team-mate to Ricciardo back in 2018.

In 2025, Lawson has a different race engineer compared to Perez since 2021, with Richard Wood replacing Hugh Bird. When Motorsport.com asked about this, with the criticism Bird was getting from Perez’s fans last year in mind, Horner claimed “it was a natural change”.

“Hugh has recently added to his family and his skill set can really be well utilised within the factory,” Horner added. “So, it was a win-win situation. He gets a few more nights at home, but at the same time, plays a key role in our vehicle dynamics department, bringing all that trackside knowledge and experience into that department.

“He’s an incredibly bright engineer and he’ll be an asset to that. And at the same time, it’s part of the team’s natural evolution where it gives Woody the chance to step up and into that role of engineering Liam. So, it was just a natural juncture for that to happen.”

But the change of driver will be the biggest element in cooling what had apparently become strained relations on the underperforming side of the Red Bull garage in 2024. A fresh start can just be so welcome to all parties.

Liam Lawson, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

There is a lesson in Lawson’s short, existing, F1 history, however, that should stand him well now he’s a full-time driver.

This is how the impression he made during his cameo run in 2024 rubbed up two very experienced drivers.

One was, of course, Perez and came in that almighty scrap in the Mexican GP that ended with Lawson giving Perez the finger in front of his home crowd.

Lawson issued a mea culpa when this writer suggested that’s the sort of thing Marko enjoys of his drivers in the immediate aftermath of the race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, but this had more to do with how an RB racer had compromised a Red Bull car.

The more glaring issue, as ultimately understood by all parties, was just how badly Perez was driving the RB20 that it was in Lawson’s orbit in the much slower VCARB 01 in the first place…

Lawson’s first 2024 spat with an established driver came with double world champion Fernando Alonso only the previous week – just his first week back replacing Ricciardo, in the United States GP sprint race.

In terms of Lawson’s driving, he probably was over the line in terms of aggression in shoving the Aston Martin driver off at Austin’s Turn 11, and Alonso was never going to let something like that slide.

But in taking this approach immediately on his F1 return it shows that Lawson is utterly fearless at the top level with everything on the line – given that Marko can lose confidence in a driver on the evidence of just a single action.

That should stand Lawson well as he gets to grips with F1’s hardest job: being Verstappen’s team-mate. Here, such confidence can quickly crumble…