Liam Lawson has revealed that Daniel Ricciardo was the only driver to congratulate him after landing a Red Bull seat for the F1 2025 season.

Lawson is preparing for his first full season in F1 with Red Bull, having been signed as Max Verstappen’s new team-mate after Sergio Perez vacated his seat at the end of last year.

Liam Lawson reveals Daniel Ricciardo message after Red Bull promotion confirmed

The New Zealander’s rise to a Red Bull seat comes after just 11 F1 starts for the Racing Bulls (previously AlphaTauri) team spread across 2023/24.

Lawson received an unexpected F1 debut after Ricciardo suffered a broken hand in practice at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix, contesting five races and registering the team’s best result at that stage of the season by finishing ninth in Singapore.

Despite his impressive performances, Lawson was overlooked for a full-time seat for 2024 as the team opted to retain the returning Ricciardo alongside Yuki Tsunoda.

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However, Ricciardo was ousted 12 months later as Lawson stepped in to contest the final six races of last season before securing a promotion to Red Bull’s senior team.

Speaking to GQ Australia, Lawson claimed that he had frequent talks with Ricciardo around the time he replaced the eight-time grand prix winner following last year’s Singapore GP.

And he revealed that Ricciardo was the only driver to reach out when he secured a Red Bull Racing seat for the F1 2025 campaign.

He said: “I actually spoke to Daniel a lot when it was happening. I will always have so much respect for him.

“Throughout the whole ordeal, from when the rumours started to when they were confirmed, he never said a bad word about or towards me.

“He never made it about me and him, because at the end of the day it wasn’t our decision.

“It’s up to the team and what they decide to do. He was so good to me through all of it.

“Fast forward to December, when I got the Red Bull seat, and Daniel is still the only driver, past or present, to send me a message about it, congratulating me.

“It says a lot about him as a person.”

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Lawson admitted that it was a “brutal” experience watching on from the sidelines at the start of 2024 as he hoped that the stars would align for him to return to a race seat, but insisted that he did not “wish” for Ricciardo’s “downfall.”

He said: “The possibility of anything in this sport slips away all the time.

“Last year was an emotional rollercoaster. You obviously never wish for somebody’s downfall, but I knew that the only way I was going to get a seat was to replace somebody, so watching the season was brutal.

“There would be races where a seat seemed closer and then it would go away again, just like that.

“In the meantime, Red Bull was testing me and I was trying to nail every single opportunity that they gave me.

“It wasn’t an enjoyable experience.”

Lawson’s comments come just days after Ricciardo ended his extended social media silence with a first Instagram post of 2025.

In a short clip to promote a new business venture, Ricciardo made various references to the end of his F1 career, commenting at one stage: “I’ve taken my foot off the gas a bit lately.”

Ricciardo has said little since the conclusion of his F1 career last September beyond issuing a short statement on social media after his Racing Bulls exit was announced.

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com last season, Racing Bulls racing director Alan Permane, who previously worked with Ricciardo at Renault in 2019/20, admitted to being surprised by the Australian’s decline.

He said: “The Daniel I knew when we were at Renault together, it all just came very easily for him.

“He came in and was very quickly up to speed. He was fast in qualifying, fast in the race and did everything, as always, with a smile on his face and managed to achieve a couple of podiums along the way with Renault.

“It certainly was tricky for him here [Racing Bulls] and it’s odd because he’d have outstanding weekends like Miami [2024], where he qualified and finished in the sprint.

“It just looked like: ‘Ah, here we go.’ And then, that afternoon, he qualified 18th for the main race.

“I don’t know what it was and, if I did, I’m sure we’d have worked on it together and fixed it. He doesn’t know what it was.

“There’s an inconsistency, or a struggling with the tyres, or whatever it is, I don’t know.

“But for Yuki to be able to take the same car and deliver reasonably consistently, I know it was very frustrating for Daniel.

“We spent a lot of time poring over data and, certainly with his race engineers, he handled it incredibly professionally, just looking at himself the whole time.

“We would constantly, of course, make sure the car was performing as it should have been, but Daniel would spend time with his engineers just seeing how he could improve and what he could do better.

“I know he was as frustrated as anyone to not be able to deliver.”

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