Liam Lawson Reveals His Parents Sold Their House to Fund His Karting Career on the Way to F1

• Liam Lawson has revealed his parents sold their house to keep him racing in karts, while his sisters gave up international dance careers to support him.
• Lawson describes confronting Red Bull’s Helmut Marko at Zandvoort in 2023, a meeting that came hours before a Daniel Ricciardo practice crash opened the door to his F1 debut.
• The Racing Bulls driver has scored points eight times in 11 Grands Prix in 2026 and says dirt biking remains his main outlet away from the track.

Liam Lawson has opened up on the sacrifices his family made to get him into Formula 1, revealing his parents sold their house to keep him racing in karts and that his sisters gave up international dance careers so he could pursue his own ambitions in motorsport.

The Racing Bulls driver made the comments in the latest instalment of F1 TV’s Off The Grid series, in which he gave presenter Lawrence Barretto a look at his life away from the track, including a visit to his apartment and a drive to a dirt bike track close to his home.

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A Family That Gave Up Everything

Lawson has fewer than 50 race starts to his name, even with four years spent on the fringes of the F1 grid, and he traced that path back to a childhood built on family sacrifice. “My parents sold the house when I was go-kart racing to be able to afford to keep racing,” he said. “Everybody sacrificed a lot: family holidays, stuff like that. My sisters both danced internationally, and they stood down that as well.”

He also credited his father with his early driving education, coming from a dad with no background in the sport. “My dad didn’t have an understanding of motorsport at all. He taught me how to drive and my dad’s a terrible driver! So we’d go out in the pouring rain and he just tried my slick tyre and he would stand on a corner and tell me to brake where he stood.”

Lawson described the method in detail. “I’m like six years old and if your dad tells you to brake where he’s standing, at six years old you do what he says you need to do. Every lap, he would take a step back. He would just keep going until eventually I would obviously go off the end of the straight because I braked too late. Then he’d take a step forward and say ‘okay, that’s where you brake’!”

Doubts in Japan Before a Life-Changing Weekend

Lawson moved to Europe at 16 to accelerate his single-seater career, finishing second in German F4 in 2018 before joining the Red Bull Junior Programme the following year. Red Bull backed a Super Formula campaign in Japan in 2023, where Lawson was in championship contention until a crash at Motegi in August left him questioning his future for the first time.

“It was probably the first time ever that I actually started to have small doubts about it, about getting to Formula 1,” he said. “It was coming to the end of the year and I’m not hearing much. For the first time I was actually like, this might not happen here, and I’d never felt like that.”

Days later, Lawson flew to the Netherlands for the Dutch Grand Prix weekend at Zandvoort, a trip that would change the course of his career. “I had three days of basically reflecting on stuff and then I flew to Zandvoort,” he said. “I decided I’m just going to sit down with Helmut and press him, basically find out what he’s thinking.”

The Marko Confrontation That Opened the Door

Lawson forced a meeting with Red Bull Motorsport Advisor Helmut Marko on the Friday morning of the Zandvoort weekend, and the conversation did not go the way he had hoped. “I went into his office on Friday morning at Zandvoort and said ‘Why won’t you just give me a chance? You’ve invested all this money in me. What’s the point? I’ve been in the programme for five years.’ It got to the point where I think he got a little bit pissed off because he basically just shut me down,” Lawson said. “I left that meeting and I called my coach who was there and I was talking to him. ‘This is pretty tough.'”

A few hours later, Daniel Ricciardo crashed in practice, injuring his hand and forcing him out of that weekend and the following four races. The seat was not automatically handed to Lawson, who had to wait to find out if he would get the call. “It wasn’t just a straight cut: ‘Liam’s going to be in the car’,” he said. “It was: ‘Who else can we get in who’s potentially had experience, who’s driven the car?’ I went to Helmut and I just walked in there and he looked at me and he goes, ‘are you ready?’ I said: ‘Yep’. And that was the whole conversation.”

A Fragmented Path to a Second Full Season

Lawson made the most of his five-race stint in 2023, including knocking four-time World Champion Max Verstappen out of Qualifying in Singapore and scoring his first points in that race, but he was stood down when Ricciardo recovered. Red Bull kept Ricciardo for the following season, leaving Lawson to keep pushing behind the scenes. “I was just trying to push that door, so throughout the year, speaking to Helmut, speaking to Christian [Horner, Red Bull boss], just asking, ‘When am I going to get the chance?'” he said.

His opportunity came in Austin in 2024, when Red Bull parted ways with Ricciardo and handed Lawson the seat for the rest of the season. A shock promotion to the main Red Bull team followed for 2025, only for Lawson to be demoted back to Racing Bulls after two races. Asked if he felt conflicted stepping into a seat vacated by a driver whose career was ending, Lawson was blunt. “I never did because the thing is, as much as it sucks, we’re all fighting for these seats,” he said. “There’s nothing personal to it. But when you’re fighting for your career, it’s just everything and you can’t put anything in front of that.”

Lawson rebuilt at Racing Bulls and earned a second full-time campaign for 2026, where he has scored points eight times in 11 Grands Prix so far.

Dirt Biking as an Escape

Away from the track, Lawson’s main outlet is dirt biking, a hobby that stretches back to childhood, when a dirt bike was the only thing on his Christmas wish list. He has also built his own scaled-down track back home in New Zealand. “I ride for a couple of hours, go to the gym, go back, ride for a couple of hours,” he said. “It’s so much fun. Living my best life, honestly.”

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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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