Racing
© Morio
Liam Lawson’s stand-in drive at the Dutch Grand Prix reinforced the sense that Red Bull acted too quickly when it dropped him after two races in 2025. Called up on Monday to replace the injured Isack Hadjar, Lawson qualified eighth at Zandvoort, just 0.115 seconds behind seventh-placed Max Verstappen, before finishing seventh as Red Bull’s only points scorer.
Lawson had only one day in Red Bull’s Milton Keynes simulator before travelling to the Netherlands and just Friday’s FP1 to learn the RB22 on a Sprint-format weekend. Even so, he produced a 1:11.733 in qualifying, compared with Verstappen’s 1:11.618, placing the substitute directly behind the four-time world champion at his home race.
That was a markedly different picture from Lawson’s first senior-team spell at the start of 2025. Promoted after limited Formula 1 experience, he was returned to Racing Bulls after two Grands Prix in which he suffered three Q1 exits, including two last-place qualifying results during the Chinese Sprint weekend, and scored no points. He was also learning a difficult RB21 at circuits he had not previously raced in Formula 1.
Lawson said the circumstances and the car made the two Red Bull opportunities difficult to compare. “The main thing honestly last year was there were two tracks I'd never been to. So on top of that, trying to learn a car that was already very hard to drive. I think this car potentially is not so difficult to drive, or difficult to be on the limit,” Lawson said after qualifying at Zandvoort.
Verstappen crashed on the opening lap, leaving Lawson to carry Red Bull’s race. He held seventh despite a 10-second penalty for a yellow-flag infringement, finishing behind only the six McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari drivers. With Red Bull regarded as the fourth-fastest of those teams on pace, seventh was effectively the maximum available result.
Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies said Lawson had delivered under difficult circumstances. “It is never easy to jump suddenly into a different team, a different car, and take on a race like this. But he did a good job,” Mekies said on Sunday night. “Yesterday in qualifying he was only 0.1 seconds from Max, and today he brought home the points that were available in terms of pace, in seventh place.”
One weekend cannot establish what Lawson might have achieved had he remained in the RB21 in 2025, but his rapid adaptation at Zandvoort showed how little the two-race sample captured. Red Bull’s only points from the weekend came from the driver it had judged after those two events.