Liam Lawson may be relishing his Red Bull promotion but his junior series team boss Frits van Amersfoort has warned him it’s not easy working with “the Verstappens”.

After just 11 races in Formula 1, Lawson is stepping up to a Red Bull race seat this season where he’ll not only have the world’s spotlight shining on him but he’ll also be up against the reigning four-time World Champion.

Liam Lawson has been warned: A great danger in driving next to Max

That, however, is just the tip of the iceberg according to his former team boss Van Amersfoort.

The Dutchman knows both Lawson and Verstappen well having worked with them in motor racing’s junior series.

He was Verstappen’s team boss in his 2014 European Formula 3 campaign, in which he finished third, and four years later claimed second place in the ADAC Formula 4 Championship with Lawson. By then Verstappen was already in his fourth year as a Formula 1 race driver with three Grand Prix wins to his name.

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Verstappen has since gone on to record 63 Grand Prix victories, 112 podiums and four World titles. Clinching his first title with Red Bull in 2021, he dominated the sport in 2022 and 2023 where he won 15 and 19 of 22 Grands Prix respectively.

Winning a fourth Drivers’ Championship title last season, he not only saw off challenges from McLaren and Ferrari but also his own team-mate Sergio Perez, who was not able to overcome the RB20’s balance problems.

While Verstappen could drive around the problem, Perez came undone and scored a third of Verstappen’s points. It led to rumours that his days were numbered, rumours that were confirmed after the season when Red Bull and Perez announced they’d parted ways with immediate effect.

A day later Lawson was announced as Verstappen’s new team-mate for the F1 2025 championship.

Taking on arguably the most difficult job in Formula 1, his former team boss Van Amersfoort believes the New Zealander has the ability. The big question though, is can he mentally cope with ‘the Verstappen’ challenge?

“If there is one person who has a lot of potential, it is him,” Van Amersfoort told the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com. “It will be interesting to see how he holds his own at Red Bull.

“There is – and the experts agree on this – a great danger in driving next to Max.

“Because was Sergio Perez really that bad or is he mentally destroyed? Or has he perhaps mentally destroyed himself? That is difficult for me as an outsider to judge.

“But I speak from experience when I say that the Verstappens are not the easiest. In principle, they leave no room for anyone.”

His advice to Lawson is to accept that for now he’s Red Bull’s number two driver, embrace that and then capitalise on the day that Verstappen decides to either leave for a new team or quit Formula 1.

“If he is smart, he will accept that he has to play second fiddle for a while in the beginning,” he said.

“There will come a time when Max decides that it is time to take a different path or to quit. And that will be the moment for Liam to strike. Until then, I hope that Liam and Max develop a relationship in which they help each other, instead of working against each other.”

“It’s a minefield that Liam is entering, but of course you can’t turn down an offer to drive for Red Bull Racing,” Van Amersfoort realizes. “It’s just the situation as it happened. They threw Max in at the deep end at the time. He kept swimming straight away.

“That could happen to Liam too. Although we can’t rule out that he’ll go under at the moment. The pressure to perform will be enormous from day one. And after fifty years of motorsport, I’ve learned one thing: the future is always uncertain in motorsport. For everyone.”

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