Liam Lawson will already be dreading media day at the Japanese Grand Prix. He’ll be back in the colours of junior team Racing Bulls, with Yuki Tsunoda graduating to Red Bull.
He isn’t the first Red Bull driver to be demoted. Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly have also suffered that fate within the last decade.
But Lawson has suffered the unique ignominy of being dropped after just two races. Perhaps it will benefit him – Max Verstappen says Racing Bulls have a faster car than Red Bull – but it’s hard to see him ever returning to Christian Horner’s team at this point.
Karun Chandhok wants to see Lawson flourish elsewhere as Gasly and Alex Albon have done. The former is now the de facto team leader at Alpine, while the latter is beating Carlos Sainz at Williams.
Lawson’s media training is going to face the maximum test ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix. His response to the setback could, without exaggeration, define his F1 career.
F1 competitors insist Liam Lawson isn’t a ‘bad driver’ despite Red Bull exit
Speaking on F1’s official YouTube channel, journalist Lawrence Barretto shared what he’d been told by Lawson’s competitors off the record. They’ve ‘noticed’ that he lacks the same self-belief that characterised his first two stints in the sport.
The New Zealander was far from overawed when he replaced Daniel Ricciardo for the final quarter of last season. He clashed with two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, the most experienced driver ever, in his first race back at the United States GP.
The consensus is that Lawson hasn’t lost his ability overnight. Instead, his results – DNF, P14, P12 – have been attributed to psychological factors.
Nearly half the F1 grid have been through the Red Bull academy. And they all understand just how ruthless an environment it can be.
| DRIVER | CURRENT TEAM | JOINED | LEFT |
| Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 2014 | N/A |
| Yuki Tsunoda | Red Bull | 2019 | N/A |
| Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 2019 | N/A |
| Isack Hadjar | Racing Bulls | 2022 | N/A |
| Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 2014 | 2023 |
| Jack Doohan | Alpine | 2018 | 2021 |
| Alex Albon | Williams | 2012 | 2022 |
| Carlos Sainz | Williams | 2010 | 2017 |
“When I’ve talked to his rival drivers, other team bosses, they agree that Liam hasn’t suddenly become a very bad driver,” Barretto said. “What has changed over the last couple of races is that they’ve noticed that his confidence has dropped.
“His demeanour had changed, he felt quite low, very downbeat. He was very different to the character we saw last year.
“He was uber-confident and was performing at a really high level. Red Bull could see that that confidence had dropped quite significantly, quite quickly.”
How Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda move has been received in the Formula 1 paddock
While he typically leaves the running of the team to Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s Thai owner ‘indicated concerns’ over Lawson in a meeting after the Chinese Grand Prix. The first serious doubts about his future emerged after Saturday’s Sprint race, which he’d started at the back of the grid.
The noise then escalated in the early part of this week, and the swap was common knowledge before Thursday’s announcement. Tsunoda was in the Red Bull simulator around 48 hours previous.
According to BBC Sport, the team’s treatment of Lawson has generated ‘widespread disbelief’ within F1. They saw it coming, but that doesn’t make it any less remarkable.
Four drivers have now lost their seat mid-season since the start of 2023. And F1 Oversteer exclusively released on Thursday that Franco Colapinto could replace Jack Doohan after the Japanese GP too.
