'Red Bull used experimental set-up to demote me'
Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson - Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
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Liam Lawson says he underestimated how quickly Red Bull expected results, admitting he was “naive” to think he would be given time to adapt before being dropped.
The New Zealander was promoted to the senior team at the start of 2025 following Sergio Perez’s departure, but was sent back to the sister Racing Bulls squad after just two championship rounds.
Across Bahrain and Australia, both at tracks he had never raced on, including a sprint weekend in China, Lawson struggled with reliability issues and failed to score points or Q3 entries even.
"If you look at how other teams have approached bringing a young driver in and you look at the test days, the time in the seat, the amount of testing that, for example, Kimi [Antonelli], has done in the past before racing this year - we didn't do any of that," Lawson told RacingNews365.
The New Zealander complained regarding the actual depth of the shot he had at the main team. “It was two weekends on two tracks I’d never raced at,"
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'Red Bull used experimental set-up to demote me'
In China, Lawson was fine with running a 'shot-in-the-dark' set-up, since he understood that it was to be used to help him perform in the future and to better understand the car.
In the end, this did not happen. “That performance was then used to demote me from the team, basically,” he said.
Since returning to Racing Bulls, Lawson has scored points in three of the last four races.
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Looking back, Lawson admits he would have approached things differently if he’d known his Red Bull stint would last only two races. He had expected a longer run and more time to adapt.
“But I didn't at the time. I was maybe a bit naive, but I thought I was going to get longer and have time to learn,” the New Zealander concluded.
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