Firefighter Liam Lawson (Red Bull Racing): Exceeded expectations

Isack Hadjar has missed three Grands Prix since the summer break due to a wrist injury. The young Frenchman was injured during training in the summer, missing Zandvoort first, then Monza and, last week, Madrid as well. The team intends to decide together with him over the next few days whether he will be back behind the wheel for Red Bull Racing in Baku in a week’s time. Team principal Laurent Mekies explained to SPEEDWEEK.com what the conditions for a comeback are and what tests Hadjar will undergo.

In the three races that Hadjar missed, Liam Lawson stepped in for him at Red Bull Racing. The New Zealander actually drives for the sister team, Racing Bulls (where he was in turn replaced by Yuki Tsunoda in all three GPs). However, he is also familiar with Red Bull Racing, having driven for them in the first two races of the 2025 season. And he is no stranger to stepping in at short notice, being ready and flexible: in both 2023 and 2024, he stepped in as a reserve driver for his current team. Lawson, the Formula 1 firefighter.

Mekies: Lawson has done very well

How does Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies rate Liam Lawson’s performance in the past three races? The French engineer says: “I think he’s done very well. We all know how difficult it is to switch to a different team and a different car, and I think he’s coped with it better than we could have hoped.”

In Madrid, Lawson even finished a strong sixth. Mekies said after the Spanish Grand Prix: “With sixth place, he’s picked up some very important points today. He achieved the same at Zandvoort, and at Monza he would have achieved a similar result had it not been for the contact with Nico and the damage to the front wheel.” That’s when the collision with Nico Hülkenberg occurred, and Lawson finished 14th.

Mekies observes: “He has developed as a driver. He’s very calm and very focused in the car. I don’t know whether he’s trying particularly hard or not, but he’s certainly managed to keep things simple, both in his collaboration with the team and in the way he approaches his own performance and that of the car. So he focuses on the essentials, tries to get the basics right, and that works for him.”

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