Liam Lawson: Kiwi F1 Driver on his season so far and his future in Formula 1

Liam Lawson says his future in Formula One remains unclear and he expects performance over the final five race weekends to decide his fate. 

In an exclusive interview with the Mike Hosking Breakfast, the Racing Bulls driver talked about the pressures of Formula One, his demotion from the Red Bull team and what needs to be done to secure a seat for the 2026 season. 

The Kiwi is in a battle for a seat alongside Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda, teammate Isack Hadjar and Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad. 

Only four-time world champion Max Verstappen is confirmed at Red Bull next year, signed through to 2028. He is expected to be partnered by Hadjar, who is the next best driver on the organisation’s books so far in his rookie season. 

And with Red Bull understood to be eager to promote 18-year-old Lindblad after one season of Formula Two, Lawson and Tsunoda have effectively been left in a shootout for that final place to partner the junior at Racing Bulls. 

Lawson heads into this weekend’s racing in Brazil, which includes a sprint race, on 30 points and 15th place on the driver standings, two points and places ahead of Tsunoda. 

He told Mike Hosking that his future in the sport remains unknown and he just has to keep performing on the track. 

“At this point right now, the decision is not clear and hasn’t been made and has us in a position where basically I’m still working towards trying to secure that seat,” he said. 

“I think the pathway or the guide is to perform. And if you perform, you stay in the sport. That’s just how it’s been since I was 16 years old. That’s how it’s been since I joined the programme. That’s just how it is. And that’s basically my guide,” Lawson said. 

“It’s at the point of the year where obviously the decisions are being made around the four seats that are in our camp for next year. It’s something that obviously I’m very aware of. But at the same time, it doesn’t change really anything I’m doing. It doesn’t change the approach to each race weekend. All that stays the same,” he added. 

“I think all of the hard stuff makes you better anyway,” he reflected on the season. 

“And if I come out of this year, which is what I’m trying to do, I’ll be in a much better place because of sort of the hard stuff that’s been on this year.” 

Lawson is readying for this week’s Brazilian Grand Prix after a disappointing outing in Mexico, where his race lasted only a few laps and he was lucky to avoid two marshals who ran across the track. 

Last year he finished ninth in both the sprint and Grand Prix races in Sao Paulo, with an impressive fifth placing in qualifying for the main race. This year’s season culminates with race weekends in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, after which Red Bull will make their decision on the 2026 drivers. 

Lawson started the season in the Red Bull car with defending world champion Verstappen as his teammate but was demoted to the Racing Bulls team just two races into the season. His replacement Tsunoda has also struggled in the car and sits behind the Kiwi on the points standings. 

Lawson said he reflects more about his lack of time in the Red Bull car than how the Japanese driver has performed since replacing him. 

“It’s not something I think about directly with him. I think that, at the end of the day, I had two races on two tracks I’d never been to. We didn’t do pre-season, we didn’t do a load of testing last year and pre-season testing to get it ready for this season. So, I would never be able to compare because I just didn’t do the races. I did two and then I was out. He’s had the whole season in the car. 

“I could never compare because, obviously, as a racing driver, we always back ourselves, right? And I’m always going to sit here and go, ‘hey, after the amount of time, I feel like I would have got my head around it and been somewhere’. But I think, to compare … we didn’t get given the same amount of races." 

Hosking also asked Lawson how he would score himself this season, to which he responded: “Not high enough, not as high as I wanted to.” 

“I think it’s very rare to look back on stuff and think I did everything exactly as I wanted to do. For me, as long as I look back on this year and learn from things that I feel like I could have done better. I think we’ve done a really good job through a good part of this year. The second half of the year has been a lot stronger. I think we were trying to play catch-up for the first part, because of the way the start of the year unfolded. 

“And I think that we definitely got there, but in a sport where there’s just so many variables and you don’t put one piece of the puzzle together on a race weekend and, especially in a season that’s so close, you just get knocked out and you’re fighting where you don’t want to be fighting. I think that trying to do that every single weekend and have everything go right is very tough, but those are the things that I look back on and learn from.” 

The 23-year-old said a key lesson has been the pace of the Formula One season off the track. 

“It’s crazy how you leave a race weekend and just straight away switch on to the next one. I think that’s been something that has been a learning process this year … the things that I can learn from and just straight away move on to the next one, you don’t really have time to dwell or think about what’s happened.” 

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