Liam Lawson Has Recovered His F1 Career

The most commonly trodden path for any driver trying to get into Formula 1 goes a little something like this. 1. Win titles in go-karts. 2. Rise up through regional formula series such as British or Italian F4. Join an F1 junior academy if you haven't already. You'll need to. 3. Go global. If you win in regional series, you can go to Formula 3 and tour with the F1 paddock. If you do well in F3, head to Formula 2. 4. Do well in F2 and you've got half a chance of getting into F1, especially if you've not been in F2 very long. Unless you're Jolyon Palmer. He got four goes at it. 5. You've made it. Settle quickly, don't crash too much and look half quick and you might just stay in F1 for a little while. Typically, number 5 comes at the start of a season and you'll most likely get a season to prove you're quick enough. Unless you're Nick De Vries. That isn't quite how Liam Lawson's F1 career began either. Let's go back to the beginning. Lawson was born in 2002 in Hastings. No, not where the battle was, but this one, on the other side of the world. Far, far away. Like most, he went through options 1, 2, 3 and 4, winning plenty of national championships in New Zealand until he got into junior formula at age 13, with his parents selling their house to help fund his career. Leaving them, but for a stroke of luck, that still was almost not enough. After success in junior formula, F1's very own Dr Evil Helmut Marko spotted him after his win in New Zealand's Toyota Racing Series in 2019 and signed him to their previously fabled Red Bull Junior Academy. Without that, Lawson would likely be retired by now. Red Bull put Lawson through F3 in 2019 and 2020, with two sprint races and one feature race victory coming in his second season, before it was off to F2. This is where things start to get slightly strange. Progressing to F2? Natural progression, and in 2021 he had a solid run to 9th place on debut, but Red Bull also entered him into the now GT3 category of DTM, ostensibly to give him racing experience and increase his adaptability, which wasn't unique, but was rare. Pascal Wehrlein and Paul DiResta both competed in DTM ahead of their F1 debuts, but Wehrlein had links to Mercedes and the DTM was a German touring car series and not a GT series. Lawson would have won too, if it wasn't for Kelvin van der Linde's recklessness at the final round at the Norris Ring. The New Zealander vowed never to return and it was back to Formula 2. Going into his second F2 season in 2022, Lawson was still not Red Bull's next in line, until the previously incumbent Uri Vips let his, err, intrusive thoughts win on a Call of Duty stream and found out the hard way that racism will severely harm your racing career. Lawson would enjoy a strong 2022 to take third overall and four victories before heading over to Japan to compete in Super Formula. For those of you who aren't aware, the cars there are slightly faster than F2 and give drivers a chance to experience Japanese circuits in a fiercely competitive field. For example, literal Grand Prix podium finisher Kamui Kobayashi competed alongside Lawson in 2023. It was in 2023 that Lawson's F1 career got off to a truncated start and the beginning of a sequence that would see his earlier career intertwined with the end of Daniel Ricciardo's. Ricciardo was a Red Bull reserve having returned there after a humbling at the hands of Lando Norris at McLaren that saw them pay many millions to replace him with Oscar Piastri. When Nick de Vries was put out of his Alfa Tauri misery, Ricciardo became an un-reserve and replaced the Dutchman. He was kept as Red Bull's reserve driver for 2024, ready to answer the call the next time one of the four drivers was thrown overboard. Indeed, Ricciardo walked the plank after the Singapore Grand Prix as Red Bull did everything possible to turn themselves into the Watford of Formula 1. Lawson was again a close match for Tsunoda in his second mini-stint for Alfa Tauri, scoring four points to Tsunoda's eight and garnered a reputation for being a feisty on-track competitor. Performance is over the two mini-stints with what was Red Bull's junior team earned him a full-time seat for 2025. With Red Bull. After 11 Grand Prix appearances, he was thrown into the lion's den to be Max Verstappen's teammate in what turned out to be a tricky car. Still, at least he'd be given time to settle into a really difficult challenge, right? He got two whole races in which he didn't get out of the first Grand Prix qualifying sessions and didn't get close to scoring points before he was sent back to the junior team and swapped with Yuki Tsunoda. So after two races, he started from scratch in a car he hadn't driven. As we'll find out, this may have saved his F1 career. The V-Carb, as it was now known, was a benign car that was a lot more forgiving than what he had at Red Bull. And while there was a settling in period, by the Monaco Grand Prix he started to get on top of things, taking 8th in the farcical-enforced two-stop race. He was evenly matched with Isaac Hajar from there on, with Hajar taking 40 points from Monaco onwards compared to Lawson's 38, including 5th position at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with the New Zealander putting together a consistent run of results. Bearing in mind that after leaving Red Bull, and with the looming presence of Arvid Lindblad in junior formula, it really did look as if Lawson could be out of F1 at the end of 2025. The difficulty of Red Bull's car meant that Tsunoda struggled just as badly to adjust, and Red Bull were suddenly confronted with the reality that Max Verstappen's genius was elevating their car to heights it didn't deserve to be at. Everyone else had worked that out about a year before. Tsunoda scored 33 points to Verstappen's 421, and as 2025 wore on, it became clearer that Red Bull were going to demote him, and not Lawson. Still, it was the third season that Lawson had raced in F1, and like the best paid drivers from the 1990s, he was still yet to complete a full season with one team. For 2026, he was initially expected to serve as a senior benchmark to the obviously talented Arvid Lindblad, but a settled start to his season for the first time in four years has allowed him to thrive. A tricky start at the Australian Grand Prix has been followed by a steady stream of points, scoring in all but one race since then, and having a slight edge over Lindblad. Right now, that could be crucial. Hajar is starting to settle down next to Verstappen at Red Bull, and if he can cure the starting issues that have set him back, then it looks like Red Bull could have solved the difficult second driver quandary, with Nicholas Olof leading the F2 championship, Red Bull have their next junior driver on the conveyor belt, but with Lawson performing strongly and Lindblad having a good rookie season, it appears there'll be no room at the Red Bull Inn. Unless, of course, Max Verstappen triggers that performance clause in his Red Bull contract, whereby if he's not second or higher by the summer break, he can leave for free. He's 7th, 60 points behind informed Lewis Hamilton, so it's not happening. That clause will become active. With Verstappen increasingly dissatisfied with F1 life, there's no guarantee he sticks around after his contract ends in 2028, or even before that. He's made no secret of his passion for GT3 racing. With Red Bull's musical chairs, keeping yourself in the game will present F1 opportunities, and right now Lawson is doing just that. We're finally seeing what a settled Liam Lawson can do in a Formula One car, after years of uncertainty and upheaval. Thank you for watching this video, and what do you think of Lawson's start to 2026? Do you think he's here to stay in Formula One? Let us know in the comments and if you like what you've seen, please leave a like and subscribe to the channel to see more of what we're doing here at The Pickerel Online.