Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls driver in F1 2026, has opened up about the emotional toll of the rumour mill, revealing that he had to remove the sport entirely from his online life, in order to protect his mental wellbeing.
Facing the rumour mill
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Lawson admitted that seeing narratives written about him online or on websites that he “fundamentally disagree[s] with” used to hit him hard.
“Honestly, there’s so much of that in F1 that when it first starts to happen, it’s more of a, you’re like, ‘wait…that’s totally wrong’, and then you start to really think about it.”
Learning to tune out the noise
But over time, he says that the volume of online speculation in F1 was and is wrong for the most part.
“But honestly, it’s happened so much now, especially with all that’s happened over the last 12 months, that you just honestly, you start to just ignore it, to be honest, because there’s so many opinions and rumours and things that go around that are just so untrue.”
The external pressure from these narratives pushed Lawson to rethink his relationship with social media throughout the last couple of years, and heading into 2026.
“And if you really focus on every single one, it would drive you crazy. So, and then it goes down to how much you even look into social media and stuff like that, and that’s something I just pretty much removed from my life.”
Lawson has muted the sport entirely from his online life.
“Especially the F1 stuff, like every single Formula One account is muted, like just completely muted. So I don’t see anything to do with it online. So I have people telling me like, ‘oh, do you hear about this? No, no idea.’”
When asked about the impact of online separation on his wellbeing, he replied it had made a significant difference.
“For me, it did. Yeah. For me, it made a big difference.
“There’s like little things that have happened to me over my short career in Formula One so far that have like, I think at the time been quite big, but I’ve looked back on and been grateful for.”
The turning point: Mexico 2024
Liam Lawson continued, highlighting how one F1 moment stood out as the turning point; Mexico 2024. During the Grand Prix, he passed Sergio Pérez on track and showed him the middle finger whilst doing so. There had been some tension between the duo at that point, on and off track.
“And I think that was a thing in Mexico where I realised the stuff with Checo when I first came in 2024. And we had our incident on track and then I came in and I hadn’t even had Instagram notifications muted at that point, and it was just my phone.”
The messages he received were full of abuse and threats.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. The messages, the comments on posts, the craziest stuff you can imagine people saying, like even now, like if I wanted to pull it up and go through, like, um, go and find like my requests and stuff like this and have a look. You can’t even imagine some of the stuff that people are saying.”
Abuse and awareness
When asked what sorts of things were said, Lawson stated they were “just the most horrible things…
“You know, just like Formula One fans that are supporting a driver, but then the driver that they’re in competition with, they just go and say, they just, they’re like, it’s like support your driver, but I don’t know.”
These comments were not just public, but also consisted of private DM messages.
“No, no. DM directly to me. But like I, for me, for me to see it, I have to go in and go into my like requests to see it, which I just don’t really do.”
“But if I wanted to and have a look, you could see, then you see all the requests. And when you did see that.”
Seeing the volume of abuse was a shock for him. “I was like, wow, people are really, first of all, there’s a lot more people watching than I realised, which honestly, I was so naive when I came in. I just didn’t even think about that. And then I was like, okay, this is really serious. And yeah, and then I was just like, this is just not healthy to, you know, be reading and looking at.”
Rebuilding his mental space
From this, he ended up wiping everything online. “So that’s when I just wiped it clean. I actually deleted all the apps at the time. So for the rest of that season, I had no social media.”
Eventually, he returned to the online platforms with strict boundaries. “And then I reinstalled it at the start of [20]25 and was like, basically just, I just want to see my friends and my stuff that I want to see and got rid of everything else.”
In the end, Lawson affirmed that the online F1 reset was necessary, heading into the 2026 season. Being able to take a step back from the online noise and speculation allowed him space to focus on racing rather than rumours, and to work on rebuilding a healthier relationship with the sport’s online world.
