Liam Lawson Just Exposed Red Bull’s Story

Yep, Liam Lawson just made himself even more inconvenient for Red Bull, and this time it's got nothing to do with his recent results, but more like his past results. The truth might be, folks, we got sold the wrong story. If you're new to F1, last year Red Bull demoted Liam Lawson after just two races, a record by some margin. The language around the announcement was protective, naturally, a duty of care for a driver who was struggling, and it certainly helped Christian Horner, the then-team principal, that the overall perception of Liam Lawson at the beginning of 2025 within the Formula One fandom wasn't exactly favourable, because you've got to admit, that back end of 2024 did nothing for Liam's reputation. And this week, Liam Lawson went on the High Performance Podcast and gave his full-fat version of what happened around that time and said that what they said and what he experienced do not match. Sure, we've heard snippets about this before, as in, oh, what they told me was not what they told everyone else, but this time around it goes into far more detail about exactly what was asked of the New Zealander, and it does make me think, yeah, maybe I should have just taken a spanner to the back of the head and realised, yeah, how could I have fallen for the byline so easily? And considering that I think amongst the F1 fandom these days, his standing, Liam's, is a bit more favourable, now is the right time to try and help him build up some redemption. Although this time, it's not only the results that are showing that, hey, he's turning a corner here, and now maybe what was actually asked of him. As you may recall, I covered Lawson a couple of months ago, where I tracked his comeback at Racing Bulls, and fortunately for me, it's ageing pretty well. He's only gone and continued his impressive form and now sits 10th in the championship a third of the way into the season, Monaco equalling his best ever result of 5th place, and it just goes to show that that 5th place that he got in Baku last year might not have been a fluke. However, I was really just covering the here and now about what Liam Lawson could mean for the team going into the future. What I really didn't get into properly is to the nature of the demotion that he had from Red Bull Racing, or even what the team actually asked him to do in those two races, and as he pointed out, these were two Grand Prix that he had never raced at before in any other category. How can you really, upon further reflection, base a driver on that? I mean, granted, I had my suspicions back in the day, because I compared Antonelli and Lawson and their introductions at their respective teams. In contrast, Kimi was given the full red carpet treatment, and obviously, this is Toto's long-term project, as this year has shown, and he would be given all the time in the world to really find his craft, whereas Liam Lawson, as Marco put it, was saying, It also really didn't help Liam's case that his management team were really, really feisty in getting that promotion to Red Bull Racing, because in that clause back in the day, if he didn't secure a Red Bull seat within 2025, he would have had the ability to just walk away from the team and go to another team. And besides, if you found this channel for the very first time, I would like to tell you that I'd like to try and go into a little bit more detail here. The sporting results are all well and good, but this being Formula One, it does get very political very quickly. There's always a decision underneath the results into who actually benefits from what goes down, so allow me to enlighten you about what Liam said. According to his time on the podcast, on the Saturday night before the Chinese Grand Prix last year, Lawson's second race for Red Bull, the first being Melbourne, where an engine issue wiped out final practice for him, he had never driven at Shanghai before, and this was also a sprint weekend. The RB21 at the time was, in comparison to recent Red Bull machinery, a terrible car. Even Verstappen wasn't satisfied with it, and do you remember all of the kerfuffle and hullabaloo that people were saying, oh, he should go to Racing Bulls because that car was actually easier to drive? But according to Liam, the team had a collective meeting and decided what was going on in China simply wasn't working, and that in order to try and find some really big hallelujah plan, they needed to use Lawson as some kind of test bench for Verstappen in the future. Liam's saying that they made a massive change, a change you would never do on a race weekend, like a normal change times ten. In short, they were desperate to find out what was wrong, so they went big. For Liam, it was a case of starting from the pit lane with a completely different setup philosophy, a shot in the dark which the team pitched to him, apparently, as a development exercise, something that could help find a direction for the car going forward, and in his understandably inexperienced and naive mind, he agreed to it, because hey, if this can help my good form further down the line, because hey, I'll at least get half a season to prove myself, then you go with it, you roll with it, wouldn't you? I mean, after all, this was Red Bull, they had managed to get Max Verstappen his fourth world title, they'd started winning constructor's titles not that long ago after about a decade's worth of not doing so. Surely, they would be onto something, especially given the regulations hadn't changed much for 2025. I mean, yeah, he would have to sacrifice his sprint race, but if it meant that it could benefit him for the future race, well, why not? So, he ran it, and the car promptly destroyed its front tyres, as Liam goes on to explain, for your consideration. Tim, it sucked for the race. The car was so hard to drive and just killed the fronts and basically destroyed our race, but I didn't care at the time because I was like, there's a reason we've done this. He flew back to the UK after this for simulator work, according to Liam, but then Red Bull told him, right here, over the phone, they were switching him out not long after he got there, so Lawson was going back to racing Bulls, and Tsunoda was given the call-up, so, understandably, Liam continues, he was a little bit nettled. Ahem. What? If you told me before the race, okay, we're going to run this crazy car for your last race in a Red Bull, or we're going to run the setup that you run all weekend, what do you think I would have said? The result of that sacrifice became part of the evidence that he wasn't good enough. Even Nick de Vries got ten races before he got the axe. An unfortunate case, I think, of Helmut Marko channeling his spirit animal, a magpie. He saw a shiny thing over at Williams. And I know that some of you may have your own foams of doubt, and saying that this is Lawson's account alone, which is accurate, it's one driver's version of a private process. I mean, no Red Bull representative or engineer within Red Bull has come out to confirm what they did on Lawson's car, but you really do have to admit, the timeline does look pretty accurate. The results do speak for themselves. Whatever they changed to the car, it was an absolute mess, to the point where Verstappen lapped him. So, yeah, I think you can draw your own line between all of the dots, and I think they would end up at the same point. And also, my main point isn't necessarily what Liam said to everyone, it's what Red Bull did after the fact, and what we got sold, and we actually just took on the chin and thought, oh, okay, I guess he was struggling. So, to avoid something akin to what Sergio Perez was experiencing the year before, and Albon before him, and then Gasly before him, why don't you just nip it in the bud? Send him back to V-Carb. They're really understanding down there. Lord Mechies runs a really amicable ship down there. Anyway, the implication was obvious. Red Bull pulled out the pity card and said, pity poor Liam, he was overwhelmed, he was struggling against Verstappen, so we did what we had to do to protect him. He was mentally struggling, mental health and all that jazz. But naturally, Liam here reiterated what he has said before, so he's being consistent, and denied all of that. Ahem. The whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling and all this stuff, and like they were doing it to protect me. That could just not be further from what it was actually like. Every time I got in front of a camera, I was trying to be grateful and say this is not good enough, I need to do a better job. But then it was all that that was taken to. Oh, he's mentally struggling and that's why. Now, to be fair to Red Bull, their case here was stronger than just simply kindness. I mean, Horner did call this a purely sporting decision, because realistically, Red Bull were trying to reclaim once again the Drivers' Championship, and then of course, try and get back the constructors which McLaren had taken the previous year, after initially Red Bull had the lead. And in theory, they wanted Sonoda's experience within the Red Bull fold, this coming into his fifth season of competition, to try and improve the car. And do you know what? For those first few races, especially in Japan, it looked like, hey, maybe Red Bull would actually exercise patience. Pierre Vaché would actually take Yuki's feedback to consideration. It did look, for a very brief time, they might have found an equilibrium, and maybe Lawson had to be the sacrificial lamb for them to actually find this out. But then Imola happened, when Yuki totaled the car. Now, I reckon, spanner time here, that was the development kicking the balls that doomed Sonoda's call-up, even with Lauren Mechies in charge. In fact, Lauren probably saved him from being completely ejected after Honda left. But in all respects, both within the team and outside the team, the media was practically and regularly calling for his dismissal, Liam's, and then Yuki's after that. But I mention that only because it shows the point. Yuki's stint became its own cautionary tale, but he still got time Lawson never did. That was their best version of their argument, okay, but then you still have to ask what counts as performance? How do you define being worthy of remaining in the second seat of Is this down to the driver's actual talent, or maybe it's down to the usefulness of that second driver, or what is actually being asked of that driver in that particular role, in being the Red Bull second driver? And then justifying the cut by saying, oh, it's just doing this out of kind, you know, we're just thinking about Liam here. I really don't think that was the case there. Now that I really think about it, at the time of 2025, and maybe before then, when it came to that second seat, I think there might have been just simply a lot of indifference in that Verstappen was doing all of the work. He was carrying the team for so long, especially when Honda joined the brigade, and Max was just doing all of the stuff to keep Red Bull within third place of the constructors, for at least 2024, 22 and 23, he did do his part there. But in any way, the second seat really didn't matter. So I think indifference was the watchword there. And quite frankly, I think being indifferent to that seat is worse than asking too much of said seat. At least if you're playing it that way, you're actually showing some attention to it. A system that doesn't really check about the conditions that went into the results of that second driver, and instead just looks at the results point blank and goes, yeah, no, they're gone. Because yeah, five drivers have been in that seat since Daniel Ricciardo fled Red Bull to Renault at the end of 2018. And the way they framed it, Red Bull, it went really personal, because with Gasly, he wasn't ready. Albon, he couldn't handle it. Cecco, he did start off okay, he was very useful, until he wasn't and he faded away. Lawson was struggling, and then Yuki simply just didn't convince them, at least in terms of the main line role. Somehow the specific seat, the actual tub, was always innocent. It was always to do with the driver and how they were handling it. And do you recall what Cecco said to Christian Horner, his last words to the then team principal, him wishing him luck and saying that whoever comes into his seat next would need all the luck in the world and that it would cost them dearly? Well, arguably, it certainly cost Liam a lot more than a truckload of tequila. It certainly didn't help Red Bull main office that Verstappen himself disagreed with the Lawson call. And then Marco admitted the team had made a mistake promoting Lawson after only 11 races, though that admission was more about the timing rather than feeling sorry for Liam or the mechanism that Lawson has just described. And then there was Horner's post Red Bull version of events. When he was asked about the call after he left Red Bull, he reportedly said that it wasn't his choice. In short, of course, he pointed the finger at Marco. Now, this doesn't necessarily tell you that Lawson's seat was weaponized or anything, but it does go to show that within Red Bull, at least at that time before Marco and Horner were rejected, it was all to do that seat with politics and power rather than actual lap time. And here's the part which actually changed my read on this entire story, because you've really got to look at the second seat right now. People are debating about whether or not the curse is actually broken, but I do think Isaac Hajar in that seat right now, currently ninth place in the Drivers' Championship, is certainly doing something to me that is making me think that maybe the seat's a little bit more useful now. Maybe this team's paying more attention to it, because I mean, his current run right now in that second seat has not been the smoothest. It's not been the worst second seat run, but it's certainly not been a handy one. In Australia, he qualified third, but retired with an engine problem. In the China sprint, he was 15th, 8th of the race, qualified 8th in Japan, but finished 12th. And then we have Miami. He was disqualified from qualifying for a floor legality breach. Red Bull then changed power unit elements and control electronics and then started him from the pit lane, before he then crashed out early in the race. And then his visceral reaction got used as engagement bait by Formula 1 themselves. Lovely. Either way, that weekend was far worse in terms of calamity than anything Lawson experienced in the two Red Bull races he had. Objectively worse. And Red Bull's response? Nothing. And hold your horses there. I am absolutely not saying that the Miami Grand Prix weekend should be just cause in ejecting Hajar from that second Red Bull seat. On the contrary, in fact, Isaac was proof to me that a Red Bull junior can survive the rigours of such a weekend, because the team needed to protect him. They need Isaac. They need him to learn the school of hard knocks within the main team of Milton Keynes. And as a result, he then went on to the Monaco Grand Prix, and he put on a really punchy effort, and he was going toe-to-toe with George Russell, holding his own, having a podium-worthy performance, only for that to be taken away after Pierre Gasly's P3 was reinstated. But still, 4th place around Monaco, after 5th place in Canada, albeit it could have been 4th after, you know, moving around under braking, etc. And then a P6 in Barcelona after, you know, bogging down at the start. This is a sign where he is actually starting to find his feet, and he finds himself 9th place in the championship with 34 points. Although, one thing I do need to point out here is that Liam Lawson, in the sister car, is 10th, only 6 points behind. Hmm? So why has Hajar earned more time than Liam Lawson in this present situation? Well, simple. Red Bull have actually learned. It helps there's a new team principal, and Marco no longer has the same official powerbase. Naturally, new leadership would mean a different level of patience. Laurent made it clear at Racing Bulls he was more of a forgiving lead. That is a fair read, I would say, but here's where I land in all of this. When Lawson was at Red Bull, Verstappen was under contract through 2028. He was, in theory, locked in, and when Liam Lawson had his problems at Red Bull, no one was really rumbling about Max potentially leaving the team at the end of the year. That came later on in the season, but nevertheless, the second seat looked like a replaceable part. The team's identity was still Max Verstappen coded, but today, Verstappen's 7th in the championship, and reports continue to point to performance-related clauses – and let's not forget the clause that Carlos Sainz spilled the beans about – in that there are clauses specifically related to marketing and interviews that Max does not have to partake, whereas many other drivers up and down the grid do. It seems almost like a bone of contention, an envious situation that other drivers are saying, hey, lucky Max, he doesn't have to do as much as we do, but that's besides the point. What Red Bull are doing now are trying hard, really, really hard, to play down any talk of Max Verstappen leaving for another team, because he is not committed in either direction. He is not committed to stay with the team, he is not committed to leave the team, and that is probably an even worse situation than Red Bull finding out one way or another, because hey, at least they can do something with that information. What can they do right now with Max not going either way? And that, therefore, changes the value of the second seat completely from 12 months ago. Now, I'm not saying that Hadjar is going to be the next Max Verstappen or anything, and I don't think Red Bull or he, Isaac, has said that either, but he has done something equally important, because he, Isaac, is not a problem for Red Bull, in that he is doing well enough to not warrant any potential scrutiny within the team. He is young enough, he is close enough, he is useful enough, and he's confident enough. That frankness is not something that I saw many other drivers be able to do, who had the second Red Bull seat prior to, you know, Liam and Checo, etc. They rarely spoke out, whereas Isaac, oh, he's doing that almost immediately. Thusly, since Red Bull's trying to calm things down and keep their number one star driver in that team for as long as possible, because hey, if they can at least make it to 2028, that will be a victory in of itself, but if the second driver is doing, you know, okay, and is providing some points to be able to fight in some shape or form towards maybe, just maybe, getting third in the constructors, if McLaren's reliability continues to be woeful, then, you know, that'll do for 2026. There you are, okay, I'll throw a spanner here, because I can't prove for sure that Isaac Hadjar is Red Bull's insurance policy, but I can certainly say he is part of their stability policy, and even Horner, before he left, was all about stability and continuity. You need to have as many stable parts within your team as you can, and Isaac, if he can prove to be stable and continue to improve as the races go by, that'll be gravy for them, and therein lies the difference between he and Liam. Lawson was expendable, but Hadjar, he's not. They can't, Red Bull, afford to break another driver. The rotation stopped because the maths changed. The second seat at Red Bull is now worth protecting, right when instability became the thing Red Bull has to desperately avoid. That's the biggest thing I got from Lawson's interview. The system he described is still ugly. Ask the second driver to serve team interests and judge him on results shaped by that service, then wrap the decision in a compassionate narrative, and let everyone else call it failure, because for sure, Red Bull has certainly made use of the media and the fandom, believing in the second seat curse, and creating tons of articles and videos about the phenomena, which means Red Bull just, they don't have to pay any attention to it at all. So, you know, that's a win-win for them. So I think, going forward, when somebody asks you about why a particular driver failed at that team, you should ask them back, what exactly did the team ask them to do, which then created that sort of a failure scenario, because you've only got to go back to what Albon had been saying when he was teammates with Verstappen. That, put simply, development had to go behind Max, and anyone else really had to fight one of the most tricky cars up and down the grid. We already heard early reports of the 2020 example, the RB16, that was skittish. Max made it work, whereas Albon, oh, he had to race that so hard, and he was still able to get two podiums out of it. Yeah, okay, I'll hold my hand up here. I bit into the redeployment story, the struggling story, what Red Bull sold to us, and I was wrong about that. And then Lawson was asked about what this cost his F1 reputation, and this was to do with the whole sport, not necessarily Red Bull. Eh. It sounds quite sad, but it's probably just happiness. I think people probably think you're a lot happier because of the position I'm in, but I feel like I'm not happy until I achieve it. It is very much about the nature of Formula One, because this is the pinnacle of single-seater motorsport, and if you're not performing within a few races or so, there are calls very quickly about you being washed, or a fraud, or you don't deserve to be in the sport, you really don't get that much time anymore. I mean, Logan Sargent, I think, is the most poignant example of all of that. I mean, it certainly didn't help that he was really put into a team which had no business in fielding a rookie at the time, and in Liam's case, this was only after two races, and again, all the stuff that happened to him the moment he took up the role of Daniel Ricciardo after Singapore 2024, because, yeah, those few races, they were certainly eventful. He did get into quite a few scrapes with the very vocal fan bases, let's just say that. Fortunately, though, for him, he did weather the storm. When I went to the Austrian Grand Prix last year, that was when I think they fielded an upgrade which helped Liam's front suspension. It completely changed him. He got his best ever result at the time, and then he continued to get more and more and more, and now this year, it's even more, more and more and more, to the point where he's now only six points behind the second Red Bull driver. Now, again, I'm not calling for Hajar to be dropped or anything like that, but what I am calling for is for Red Bull to consider what Liam is doing at that second team, and to consider their options if Max, I don't personally think he's walking, but if he does consider walking, not that he's committed to it yet, because that exit clause is ticking, and Verstappen's keeping his options very, very closed, and meanwhile, Hajar's getting every chance Lawson never got. Red Bull hadn't responded to what Liam has said yet, and until they do, this is the only version on the record, but the timeline does aid his cause, because imagine being Lawson that flight home after China. You know the result looked awful, and why it looked awful. You think the team knows that too, but in the end, it really didn't even matter. Maybe that's the real cost of the Red Bull second seat in terms of narrative control of your own destiny, because whatever the team spewed out to the media was taken pretty much at face value. The evidence was there. They said, well, you know, for Liam's case, we had to for his own mental health, whereas Liam, he was very quick to dispute all of that, and show the real truth as to what goes on behind that particular curse, and you are, after hearing Lawson's interview, I do recommend listening to it, asking yourself whether or not the evidence that was presented to us was clean, or just straight up made up, and I am left asking you to muse this next video over here, because I know you will enjoy it. I'll just go and freshen myself up, and I'll be right with you.