Liam Lawson Finds Redemption With Red Bull

• Liam Lawson stepped in for the injured Isack Hadjar and finished seventh at the Dutch Grand Prix, ending qualifying just over a tenth of a second behind Max Verstappen
• Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said Lawson “did a good job stepping into the car” after adapting to the RB22 with only one practice session
• The result marks a turnaround from Lawson’s difficult two-race stint at Red Bull at the start of the 2025 season

Liam Lawson was parachuted into Red Bull Racing at the last minute for the Dutch Grand Prix, and by his own account, every part of the car outside the power unit felt unfamiliar. He still finished the weekend just over a tenth of a second behind Max Verstappen in qualifying and brought the car home seventh on race day.

Isack Hadjar’s wrist injury opened the seat, and Lawson’s return to the senior team carried its own pressure. He was being benchmarked against a four-time world champion at that champion’s home race, with an obvious desire to find redemption after his own aborted two-race stint at Red Bull to start the 2025 season.

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Thrown In at the Deep End

The Red Bull RB22 and Racing Bulls VCARB 03 share a power unit, but Lawson described them as very different cars to drive. With only Friday’s opening practice session in which to adapt before a busy Sprint weekend schedule, and just a single day in the Milton Keynes simulator behind him, the challenge was steep.

“It’s been very challenging to try and build up in a short space of time,” Lawson said after qualifying. “But obviously the target was to keep improving through the weekend, and I think by quali I think that was a good job from everybody to help me get comfortable in the car, or as comfortable as possible. And for me, I feel like I extracted pretty much everything I had out of the car.”

Closing the Gap Session by Session

Lawson took an encouraging sixth in the first Sprint Qualifying segment, then slipped to eleventh in the second, and finished the Sprint itself in the same position. Through main qualifying he progressed from fourteenth to eighth to eighth again, ending the session right behind Verstappen on the grid.

“As drivers, we all have plenty of self-belief, obviously,” he said. “So coming into the weekend without expecting too much, I tried to be as prepared as possible. Knowing the speed of the car this year, I just was targeting trying to get as close to Max as possible, and to try and learn from what he was doing. So it started honestly maybe a little bit closer than we expected, but just executing each time and making sure we nail each lap.”

“Every Single Thing Feels Different”

Lawson described the sensation of adapting to an unfamiliar car in blunt terms. “Honestly, the best way I can describe it is outside of the power unit, every single thing feels different,” he said. “The way the steering feels versus how the car moves, balance through corners, obviously the high-speed grip. Everything’s different about it.”

The comparison to his 2025 stint at Red Bull, when he was demoted to Racing Bulls after difficult weekends in Australia and China, was inevitable. “The main thing honestly last year was there were two tracks I’d never been to,” he said. “So on top of that, trying to learn a car that was already very hard to drive. I think this car potentially is not so difficult to drive, or difficult to be on the limit. So it’s more putting everything else together, tyre prep, just getting the balance right in the car and getting used to how it actually drives, versus a car last year that was just very tough to put on the limit.”

Caught Up in Verstappen’s Crash

The start of Sunday’s race was tricky for everyone given rain before the lights went out. Lawson got away cleanly and raced wheel-to-wheel with his team-mate through the opening corners before Verstappen edged ahead. Then, at the banked final corner, Verstappen lost control and crashed, forcing Lawson to take evasive action.

“Just impossible,” Lawson said afterward. “The whole first half of the lap was dry, and then the last two corners were completely soaked. So really easy, obviously, to do that when you have this much power, and on a slick tyre. I really lifted out of it, sort of, because honestly, I had no confidence in how much grip I was going to have there. I think Max was probably trying to get close and make an overtake, and just lost it.”

Lawson restarted in seventh and stayed there, in a no-man’s-land between the top six and the chasing pack. A 10-second penalty for a yellow-flag infringement did not change his final position.

“I’m sure there’s things that I can do better in the race, and I’ll try and reflect on that,” he said. “But in terms of positions, I don’t think we had the speed to match the guys at the front. So I feel like we knew that after yesterday as well. Quali was for both of us behind them. But it’s been a good weekend. It was good to extract everything out of quali yesterday. It’s been tough to try and get my head around this car in a short space of time, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

Mekies’ Verdict

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies praised Lawson’s performance in the context of the circumstances. “Liam has done a good job stepping into the car,” he said on Sunday evening. “It’s never easy to step into a different team, a different car, for a race like that. And he’s done a good job, only one-tenth away from Max yesterday in Qualifying, and today took the points that were available to him pace-wise with the seventh place.”

For a driver whose first stint at Red Bull ended after two races last year, a clean weekend spent within a tenth of a four-time champion, at that champion’s own home race, offered a very different kind of answer.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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