Red Bull F1 2025 driver Liam Lawson has opened up on the virtual ‘rivalry’ he established with team icon Sebastian Vettel as a youngster.

Lawson will contest his first full F1 season in F1 2025 after Red Bull confirmed the New Zealander as Sergio Perez’s replacement last month.

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The 22-year-old’s promotion to a race-winning seat comes after just 11 F1 appearances for the Racing Bulls (previously AlphaTauri/VCARB) junior team spread across 2023 and 2024.

It means Lawson, who was born in Hastings and raised in Pukekohe, will act as team-mate to reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen.

Verstappen is the second World Champion to have been produced by Red Bull’s famed driver academy, with Vettel previously storming to four consecutive titles between 2010-13.

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Lawson has revealed that he established something of a rivalry with Vettel while playing the official F1 video game in 2010 – with the Kiwi often playing as Vettel’s Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, of Queanbeyan, Australia.

Vettel and Webber had a successful if uneasy spell as Red Bull team-mates between 2009 and 2013, with the pair memorably colliding while battling for the lead at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix.

A few weeks later, Webber took a fine victory in the British Grand Prix, where his upgraded front wing had been fitted to Vettel’s car ahead of qualifying.

After taking the chequered flag to win at Silverstone the following day, Webber delivered one of the most famous team radio messages in F1 history by remarking: “Not bad for a number-two driver.”

Webber would ultimately fall agonisingly short of the World Championship that season as Vettel emerged victorious in a three-way fight, winning the Abu Dhabi decider to pip Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso to the title by four points.

Lawson has revealed how he would “always” drive for Red Bull and  “go up against” Vettel as a youngster as his interest in motor racing was cemented by the F1 video game.

He told the Times: “The first Formula 1 game I had was F1 2010. I was eight.

“That year, Sebastian Vettel won his first championship.

“I always played as Mark Webber, so that I would go up against Vettel — I would always drive the Red Bull.

“When I became a junior, coming here at the time, [I] felt like being an F1 driver.

“It’s like being in Mission Control at Nasa.”

Lawson’s rapid rise to a Red Bull seat has led some to draw comparisons with Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon, who were both dropped by the team after struggling to match Verstappen.

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com last year (bottom), Lawson insisted that he had no fears about going up against Verstappen in F1 2025.

He said: “I don’t know what they [Gasly and Albon] felt when they were there.

“You can always look at it as an outsider and think: ‘This is what it looks like they felt.’ But I don’t know what it was like for them.

“I believe, for anybody to go up against Max, you have to be realistic and know that he’s the fastest guy on the grid right now and that you’re not going to be outqualifying the guy by half a second.

“It’s not going to be something that’s really going to be happening. For me, it’s more the opportunity that’s there to learn from the best.

“For me as a driver, to be able to go in against the guy who’s won four world championships and is well seasoned… he’s been in that car for a long time.

“That car is almost… not developed around him, but he’s been a massive part of developing that car and understands it very well.

“In terms of how to drive it, it’s all right there on paper.

“When you see all the data that he brings in, for me as a driver to be alongside that, to be able to learn from him and have all that access, I think that’s what’s exciting for me about the opportunity.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner went on to confirm that Lawson will be expected to support Verstappen in F1 2025 with the team aiming for “Max to win.”

Asked if Lawson will be expected to complement, rather than challenge, Verstappen, Horner told talkSPORT: “Absolutely.

“If you liken it to football, you can’t have two [elite] centre forwards – you’ve got to have strength and depth in your team.

“I think that Liam, with the experience that he has coming into the team, is there to provide that strength in depth in what we need from an engineering perspective, from a tactical perspective, because it’s going to be tight next year.

“You’ve got Ferrari that’ll have [Lewis] Hamilton and [Charles] Leclerc two very strong drivers; you’ve got [Lando] Norris and Oscar Piastri at McLaren.

“There’s contradicting aspects [within F1] because, on the one hand, you’ve got the team and the drivers are contractors to the team.

“On the other side, you’ve got the Drivers’ Championship where the interest and the individual interest is. It’s about communication and being up front with the drivers.

“We’re perhaps slightly different to other teams where we go: ‘Do you know what? Max Verstappen is the most valuable asset in Formula 1. He’s our lead driver. If you can get close to him, fantastic. But the reality is the expectation is for Max to win.’

“A team like Ferrari next year, for example, are going to have two drivers that are going to be taking points off each other – and which horse do you back?

“You have to back both of them, but that sometimes becomes divisive within a team.

“Different teams have different approaches.”

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