At the mid-season point of 2025 Liam Lawson has found himself tossed around—still on the grid, but marked by inconsistency and shrouded in uncertainty.
After a 2024 season that saw a major underachievement from Sergio Perez relative to his champion teammate Max Verstappen, Liam Lawson was promoted from Racing Bulls to Red Bull. Such a move has always been a sink or swim proposition, notoriously so at Red Bull.
Even by those standards, the situation the young Kiwi driver was coming into was formidable. The Verstappen-Perez gap was effectively the difference in Red Bull losing the constructors’ title in 2024. Lawson was being called upon to bridge that gap and help put Red Bull back at the top step. Instead, he barely made it out of the opening rounds with his career intact.
Two races to forget at Red Bull
The expectations for Lawson were daunting, and yet nobody expected the disastrous results of his two races in the RB21. At Melbourne, he started 18th and crashed out. Lawson then started dead-last at Shanghai and only officially finished 12th after numerous post-race disqualifications.
A change was hurriedly made in time for Suzuka, and Lawson found himself back over at Racing Bulls. There, while he has not been able to put together consistent results, the car has at least been more to his liking.
Lawson improving, but still with troubles
When he has been on, he has had the VCARB 02 in the sharp half of the field, including moving up from ninth starting spot at Monaco to eighth and starting and finishing sixth at Austria.
But he followed this up with a first-lap crash at Silverstone, has already accumulated four penalty points this season, and overall Lawson has not been able to match the consistent pace of rookie teammate Isack Hadjar through mid-season 2025.
Lawson has only qualified ahead of Lawson at Jeddah and Austria, with that P6 start and finish at Red Bull Ring marking the only time the New Zealander has finished ahead of his teammate.
Are the sharks circling?
Struggling at the mid-season point of 2025, Lawson will no doubt be looking to regroup over this summer break. With Red Bull already fast-tracking Arvid Lindblad into a Super License, his seat may once again be heating up.
