The 2025 Formula 1 season starts on 14 March in Melbourne, with a Kiwi driver in one of the hottest seats in the series.
Liam Lawson says lining up in the second Red Bull car alongside Max Verstappen is ‘surreal’ after six years as a Red Bull Junior and being sidelined for much of the F1 2024 campaign.
He had fought his way into contention after five cameo appearances in place of Ricciardo midway through the F1 2023 season after the Australian broke his hand while practising for the Dutch Grand Prix.
Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda were the preferred race options for F1 2024, meaning Lawson was relegated back to reserve driver.
It was an experience Lawson admits he found especially difficult. “I’d always imagined what it’d be like to be a Formula 1 driver, and then I got the chance to race in Zandvoort, I did those five races, then had to step back.”
Lawson’s rise to F1 really kicked into gear when he raced New Zealand’s Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship. There, he battled with and defeated Marcus Armstrong in 2019 where he won the series; and Yuki Tsunoda in 2020, where he finished second behind Igor Fraga while Tsunoda was fourth.
Barrie Thomlinson, the founding manager of what was then the Toyota Racing Series, says Red Bull likely chose Lawson over Tsunoda for the Kiwi’s obvious potential.
“Yuki’s been in F1 for four years now, and ultimately that counts against him because Liam came in and done a great job. He’s matched Yuki in a very short time in F1.”
He was named a Red Bull Junior at that point but still had to raise the funds necessary to continue racing.
Having raced those five events in 2023, being left in limbo afterward was hard.
Only to be left with uncertainty as to whether he’d ever get the opportunity again was difficult.
“Stepping back and watching after that was really tough. I knew everything. I knew what it was like. Everything I was watching, I’d been there, I’d done it, and experienced and knew what it was like.
“That was really, really tough, honestly, as a driver to watch that – also not knowing if I was going to get that chance again. I knew that I’d miss driving going into a reserve season, just doing reserve. I knew I would miss driving the car, but I didn’t realise how much I’d miss the competition side of it, actually being in a championship and competing. That was the hardest part of this year.”
Lawson was finally given another opportunity following the Singapore Grand Prix towards the end of the F1 2024 season.
Thrown into the second Racing Bulls in place of Ricciardo for the final six races, he showed promising form.
A near match for Tsunoda, his more experienced team-mate, he did enough to secure the step up to Red Bull seat, leaving Tsunoda at the VCARB development team for what is expected to be his last year with Red Bull.
It has been a tempestuous 18 months during which Lawson himself admitted he felt his F1 dream was slipping away. Now, he occupies one of the most coveted seats in the sport alongside the benchmark performer in, Max Verstappen.
“It’s surreal,” Lawson says.
