It has taken plenty of patience and an agonising wait on the sidelines, but Liam Lawson can finally call himself a full-time Formula 1 driver.
On Thursday Red Bull and sister team RB confirmed one of F1’s worst-kept secrets that the New Zealander will replace veteran Daniel Ricciardo at the squad, with a view to kickstarting a full-time campaign in 2025 for the Anglo-Italian team.
Reaching Formula 1 and laying claim to one of its 20 seats is hard enough as it is. But, as with many Antipodean drivers, it has taken a small miracle for Lawson to get noticed in Europe in the first place.
Growing up a stone’s throw away from the Pukekohe circuit on New Zealand’s North Island, Lawson got involved in the local go-karting scene at an early age and as he kept winning he moved up to domestic single-seater series.
But to reach the highest echelons of racing, moving to Europe early is all but required. So aged 16, Lawson packed his bags to compete in the German F4 championship with Dutch squad Van Amersfoort Racing, thanks to backing from a New Zealand sponsor.
Liam Lawson, Reserve Driver, Visa Cash App RB F1 Team
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
But to get there in the first place, Lawson revealed his parents made a huge sacrifice. “My parents and my whole family really gave a lot, especially in the early years through go-karts,” Lawson told Red Bull’s Talking Bull podcast. “My parents sold their house so that I could keep racing. It’s massive. They gave absolutely everything for me to be able to race, even just go-karts because it’s so expensive.”
Like McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who lived in boarding school in the UK as a teenager while trying to forge a racing career, Lawson’s perseverance was severely tested while 11,000 miles from home. But that early sacrifice often proves a formative experience for the Australian and Kiwi drivers that do make it across and provides them with the steel and grit to survive in F1’s often difficult environment.
“I didn’t finish high school or anything,” Lawson shared. “Honestly, I was just excited to be able to go and chase my dream. And there are always hard parts about it, but there was never a question of whether it was too difficult and I wanted to go home.”
But while he showed promise by finishing second in his first season in Europe, Lawson didn’t get picked up by an F1 junior academy right away, and he headed back home to New Zealand’s famed Toyota Winter Series without a plan after that, and with his F1 dream on the verge of already being shattered at the age of 17.
“Being from New Zealand, trying to get the money to compete overseas is really, really hard,” Lawson recalled. “So, between a group of amazing people that have been behind me, sponsors and investors, we set up the structure to get enough money to go to Europe and do a season and try and get recognised by a junior team, because without it, there was no chance to get a Formula 1.
“I had a good season, but I didn’t have any call-ups from any teams. And then I just did this championship in New Zealand’s over the off-season, with no plan of what I was doing in 2019.
Liam Lawson, AlphaTauri AT04
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“As a kid being into Formula 1, I would watch this series every single year and I dreamed of driving it. And to me, it was like the Formula 1 of racing at the time.”
Fortunately for Lawson, talent scouts were watching the opening round of the 2019 Toyota Racing Series. And not just any scout, but Red Bull’s Helmut Marko, who was keeping tabs on Lawson’s older team-mate Lucas Auer, who was part of the Red Bull junior programme at the time.
And even before he would go on to beat Auer, and fellow Kiwi Marcus Armstrong to the title, Lawson would get the news he dreamed of for so long.
“I guess Helmut was watching because of Lucas and I had a really good first weekend,” he said. “When I raced in F4 in Europe, Jack Doohan was a Red Bull junior at the time and we tested together somewhere. I remember seeing him walking around in his Red Bull suit and I remember thinking how cool it would be to be a Red Bull junior.
“And I got the call-up after that first weekend in New Zealand, I found out one or two days after the weekend. I was sitting in a cafe – I remember exactly where I was sitting. I got told and it was obviously pretty emotional. I basically got picked up at the perfect time and it saved my career. I had those four weeks left of that championship, and then I had no plan after that…”
Lawson then plied his trade in FIA F3 and F2, going head-to-head with Piastri, dovetailing his single-seater activities with a Red Bull-backed stint aboard a Ferrari GT3 car in the German DTM sportscar championship, that yielded him a runner-up spot.
Liam Lawson, Carlin
Photo by: Motorsport Images
Finishing third in the 2022 F2 championship landed him a Red Bull reserve role alongside a Japanese Super Formula campaign for 2023, and when Ricciardo broke his wrist in Dutch Grand Prix practice Lawson got the nod to deputise for the Australian for the next five rounds.
In typical Red Bull fashion, it was sink or swim for Lawson, but he kept his head cool and scored points in the extremely challenging Singapore Grand Prix.
Lawson’s cameo performances complicated matters for Red Bull in the short term, with Yuki Tsunoda and Ricciardo still getting the nod over Lawson to start the 2024 season while Lawson returned to a reserve role.
But what Red Bull was really looking for in a driver for the renamed RB team is someone who could be a future Red Bull driver. And with it becoming clear Ricciardo isn’t ticking all those boxes any more, it has handed Lawson the opportunity to battle Tsunoda for a Red Bull berth.
Following his family’s sacrifice to give him a fighting chance, and Red Bull noticing him just when he was approaching a dead-end street, claiming a Red Bull seat would be the third miracle on Lawson’s rocky road to the top.
