{"id":756578,"date":"2026-06-24T05:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T05:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756578\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T05:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T05:33:13","slug":"max-wasnt-happy-shocking-reveal-about-crazy-sacrifice-that-ended-liam-lawson-at-red-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756578\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Max wasn\u2019t happy…\u2019 Shocking reveal about \u2018crazy\u2019 sacrifice that ended Liam Lawson at Red Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam Lawson felt set up to fail in his two-race stint at Red Bull Racing that ended with his demotion to Racing Bulls last year.<\/p>\n

Lawson replaced Sergio P\u00e9rez at Red Bull Racing at the start of last season off the back of a two-part 11-race cameo at Racing Bulls in 2023 and 2024 but was alarmingly adrift of teammate Max Verstappen, qualifying on average 0.9 seconds 15.5 places behind the Dutchman.<\/p>\n

Scroll down for more in Pit Talk! <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship\u2122 LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n

Red Bull Racing, however, was struggling for form generally, and Lawson \u2014 whose pre-season was severely hampered by unreliability \u2014 was used in part to troubleshoot the car\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

The Kiwi was given an experimental set-up for his second race, the Chinese Grand Prix, in a bid to tame a car that had proven extremely difficult to drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had spoken about trying something quite wild on the car to get some comfort for me but also because the team at the time collectively we weren\u2019t happy at all with the car, Max wasn\u2019t happy,\u201d he told the High Performance podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided [to] start from the pit lane and basically radically change the car \u2014 a change you would never do on a race weekend, like a normal change times 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on board with it because the idea was, \u2018Let\u2019s try something quite crazy, but it might help get a direction for Liam and for the team going forward to make this car a bit easier to drive\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a shot in the dark, and even if it kind of worked, the chance of it working over a race was really low.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew all of these things, but it was proposed to me as, \u2018This is going to help you for the future, and this is going to give us a bit more of a direction. We\u2019re going to try this\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran it. It sucked \u2026 [but] honestly, I didn\u2019t care at the time because I was like, \u2018There\u2019s a reason we\u2019ve done this\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen on [the next] Monday I get the phone call: \u2018Actually we\u2019re switching you\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019d told me before the race, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re going to run this crazy car for your last race in a Red Bull, or we\u2019re going to run the set-up that you\u2019ve run all weekend\u2019, what do you think I would have said?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat at the time was a really hard thing to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson said he felt let down by the team to have been dealt with so brutally after just two compromised grands prix.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo races at two tracks I\u2019ve never been to in a season like that \u2014 I won\u2019t accept that you can judge me off that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a team game. You have to have everybody working together, and that was obviously not what I felt when that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of the switch, Christian Horner, the then Red Bull Racing principal, claimed Lawson\u2019s demotion was part of his \u201cduty of care to protect\u201d the Kiwi and that he\u2019d been mentally struggling in the top team.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, that could not be further from what it was actually like,\u201d Lawson hit back.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t the only rookie turfed after a small sample size of races, with fellow antipodean Jack Doohan axed from Alpine just six grands prix in the season and eventually frozen out of his team completely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing I thought about a lot is that there\u2019s a lot of guys that got badly treated or unfairly treated in Formula 1 and were out,\u201d Lawson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack Doohan, somebody who did [six] races \u2014 that is not fair to judge somebody.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had two in a Red Bull, but even [six] races as a whole is not fair to judge somebody in Formula 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I still had a drive, so that was what I tried to really focus on, and that\u2019s what we talked about a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou still have an opportunity to prove yourself here, you still have an opportunity to build a future in Formula 1 \u2014 that\u2019s all still there \u2014 without focusing on the fact that I lost the dream drive that I wanted since I was young.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the harsh treatment, Lawson said the experience had helped him grow as a driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I think about it, I feel like I\u2019m a far better driver and a far more resilient driver,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Marquez reigns after Bezzecchi drama | 17:52<\/p>\n

FERRARI POISED FOR GAME-CHANGING UPGRADE<\/p>\n

Ferrari will bring its first engine upgrade to this weekend\u2019s Austrian Grand Prix under the sport\u2019s contentious concession rules, according to Italian media reports.<\/p>\n

Ferrari has been granted two upgrades for 2026 and another two for 2027, along with cost cap breaks and loosened development restrictions, under the ADUO regulations.<\/p>\n

Standing for additional development and upgrade opportunities, the ADUO mechanism ranks engine manufacturers based on the performance of their internal combustion motors. The FIA undertakes analysis of performance roughly every quarter of the season using parameters kept secret from the teams to avoid them gaming the system.<\/p>\n

However, the results of the first ADUO period, which ran to the end of the Canadian Grand Prix, controversially had Red Bull Powertrains ranked as the most powerful motor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More surprising still was that Mercedes, by consensus fielding the best power unit package, was found to be down on power by two per cent or more, entitling the brand to one upgrade and some spending development concessions in 2026 and 2027.<\/p>\n

Ferrari, along with Audi and Honda, was found to be more than four per cent down on power and thus entitled to two development opportunities in both 2026 and 2027 along with further spending and development concessions.<\/p>\n

The Italian team has staked its season on receiving these concessions, having said as early as the Chinese Grand Prix, the second weekend of the year, that it expected to receive at least one upgrade opportunity.<\/p>\n

Having pushed ahead expectantly with its engine program, the Italian media is reporting that Ferrari will have its first of two engine upgrades for the year ready to go in Austria.<\/p>\n

Along with a new fuel from supplier Shell, Ferrari hopes it can slash the engine gap to Mercedes.<\/p>\n

Fuel is an underrated performance component in 2026, with the fuel flow limit now based on megajoules per hour rather than kilograms per hour, as it had been since 2014.<\/p>\n

A more energy-dense fuel can therefore bring both a boost in power output while also saving weight by allowing a car to complete a race distance with less in the tank.<\/p>\n

The timing of the upgrade could be crucial for the team\u2019s championship hopes, with three of the next four circuits sensitive to engine performance and energy recovery, in particular the upcoming races at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps.<\/p>\n

Barcelona was the first weekend of the season Ferrari outscored Mercedes, reducing its deficit to 72 points. Lewis Hamilton\u2019s victory slashed his gap to Andrea Kimi Antonelli to 40 points on the drivers title table.<\/p>\n

Based on the results of the Spanish Grand Prix, equalising power output could draw Ferrari ahead of Mercedes in overall performance terms.<\/p>\n

The team brought a significant aerodynamic upgrade to Spain, the result of which was to make the SF-26 the quickest car through the corners, with straight-line speed its only deficit, in particular how much earlier it would run out of charge at the end of the straights.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they have a better engine, they\u2019re dominating,\u201d reigning champion Lando Norris told Sky Sports after Barcelona. \u201cThey\u2019re the class of the field in terms of cornering performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they make improvements on the engine side, then they\u2019ll embarrass everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waters slammed over ‘DANGEROUS’ move | 02:14<\/p>\n

BOTTAS SAYS CAR ISSUES BEHIND SLOW START TO F1 COMEBACK<\/p>\n

Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas has admitted the start of his comeback season hasn\u2019t gone as well as he\u2019d hoped but that car inconsistency has played a significant role in his results.<\/p>\n

The Finn had sat out the 2025 season after being dropped by his then Sauber team at the end of the previous year but rejoined the grid alongside fellow returnee Sergio P\u00e9rez to help build the brand-new Cadillac entry from the ground up.<\/p>\n

However, despite a career of searing single-lap pace, he currently trails P\u00e9rez 5-2 in grand prix qualifying so far this season. Though the margin between them is a slender 0.078 seconds, that average is swayed by P\u00e9rez suffering deployment problems in China that left him almost 1.5 seconds adrift of his teammate.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez has also achieved the team\u2019s best qualifying result of 18th \u2014 twice, in Australia and Monaco \u2014 and has finished ahead of Bottas twice from the three grands prix both have finished, and the Mexican would have scored the team\u2019s first point in Monaco had it not been for a start infringement.<\/p>\n

While Bottas admitted the season \u201cdefinitely hasn\u2019t come my way yet\u201d, he pointed to car problems being behind the one-sided scoreline.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it is the inconsistency with the set-up,\u201d he said, per RacingNews365. \u201cEven some parts of the car quite often feel different to what you expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, at the beginning of the year, having such a big gap between the races and not spending that much time on track hasn\u2019t helped. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m really hoping that now we get into a better flow, a better rhythm, understand the issues we\u2019ve been having with the car better and go from there. It\u2019s still a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Cadillac drivers are contracted for next season, and Bottas and team boss Graeme Lowdon have shot down rumours linking development driver Colton Herta \u2014 still without a superlicence \u2014 to the Finn\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson felt set up to fail in his two-race stint at Red Bull Racing that ended with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-756578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}