Liam Lawson says he will “never forget” Christian Horner’s “welcome to Red Bull Racing” message after landing a seat with the team for the F1 2025 season.

Red Bull announced this week that Lawson will replace Sergio Perez for F1 2025 season, with the New Zealand youngster stepping up from the Racing Bulls junior outfit to become Max Verstappen’s new team-mate.

Liam Lawson reveals how Christian Horner broke Red Bull promotion news

Red Bull’s driver restructure was completed on Friday when Racing Bulls confirmed Isack Hadjar, the French-Algerian who finished second in this year’s F2 standings, as Lawson’s successor alongside Yuki Tsunoda.

PlanetF1.com revealed ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that Lawson was highly likely to replace Perez for next season, with the Mexican driver’s departure finally confirmed on Wednesday.

Lawson’s promotion comes even though he has just made 11 F1 appearances to date spread across the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

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The 22-year-old made five starts last season as a substitute for Daniel Ricciardo, who suffered a broken hand in a practice crash at the Dutch Grand Prix, scoring Racing Bulls’ best result at that stage of 2023 by finishing ninth in Singapore.

Lawson then replaced Ricciardo on a full-time basis in the aftermath of this year’s Singapore GP, registering two ninth-placed finishes in the United States and Brazil in six outings.

Appearing on Red Bull’s in-house Talking Bull podcast, Lawson has revealed he learned of his promotion in a phone call from Horner – including a message he admitted in a separate interview that he will “never forget.”

He said: “I knew that this has been on the cards for a change.

“Obviously, nothing was planned or set in stone or anything like that and it’s all performance based, as it always is.

“They had the meeting and Christian was kind enough to send me a text, just a heads up, that the meeting was good.

“And then he called me and basically gave me the news. And he gave me the classic one liner: ‘Welcome to Red Bull Racing.’

“It was very exciting to hear over the phone, so it was cool.”

Lawson revealed that his father was the first person he told after landing a Red Bull seat, with his dad left stunned by the news.

He explained: “I called my dad.

“Obviously, he’s been a massive influence on me as a person growing up and he was very emotional. I’ve never actually really seen him like that, which is quite cool.

“He’s been with me since day one, literally, and he’s been a big part of the mentality I’ve had growing up and coming into racing and being a racing driver.

“He’s a big person who influenced me as as a kid. Not that he raced, but just letting me believe as a kid that I could do anything if I believed in it enough and I worked hard enough for it.

“I’ve carried that forward all the way through.

“I FaceTimed him and I said to him, I was like: ‘Dad, just looking at planning my January calendar at the moment and going to head back to Europe around mid-January, towards the end of January.’

“Normally we have a test with VCARB at Imola. That was the same last year and that was planned this year as well.

“And I said to him: ‘I’m actually not going to be testing in Imola right now. I’m going to be testing in Silverstone now.’

“His reaction was like: ‘What are you saying?’

“So I said: ‘I got the seat, basically.’

“It was real funny, because he sat on it for probably two minutes and I could see he just couldn’t really believe it. Same for me.

“And then probably after a delay of two minutes he then started reacting and he got emotional about it.

“It was very cool. He went and got my mum, who was in a different room, and basically told the family.

“They’ve given a lot for me. Especially when I was younger, a lot.

“All my siblings and my parents have given up a lot for me to be able to do this.”

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