{"id":860080,"date":"2026-08-18T22:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860080\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T22:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:02:15","slug":"liam-lawson-rejects-ghost-suggestion-with-statement-of-defiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860080\/","title":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson rejects &#8216;ghost&#8217; suggestion with statement of defiance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Liam Lawson has brushed aside the notion that his impressive form with Racing Bulls has banished the &#8220;ghosts&#8221; of his brief spell at Red Bull at the start of last season.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>The New Zealander is ninth in the drivers&#8217; championship with 43 points after 11 rounds. He has scored points on eight of those weekends and has taken two sixth-place results, in Monaco and at Silverstone, which has helped the Faenza-based squad to fifth in the standings at the halfway stage of the campaign.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>By all accounts, the 24-year-old is one of the standout performers in F1 this year, and his current situation is a far cry from when he was promoted to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen but lost the seat after two grands prix, with Yuki Tsunoda replacing him.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Asked by PlanetF1 whether his current season had helped put the &#8220;ghosts&#8221; of his Red Bull spell to bed, Lawson said he had not viewed the situation in those terms.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Honestly, no, not really,&#8221; Lawson said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t really; I haven&#8217;t really thought too much about what people thought last year or anything like that.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very focused on where I&#8217;m at right now, making sure I have a good season and trying to obviously have a future in Formula 1 and work towards the same goal we&#8217;re all working towards.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Lawson said he is not spending time thinking about what happened during his brief Red Bull stint. &#8220;So yeah, in terms of stuff that&#8217;s happened in the past and last year, it&#8217;s not really something that I think about now,&#8221; he said.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s probably more for you guys [media] to decide whatever you think, because for me, it&#8217;s not something I think about now.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Lawson added that he sees last season as a difficult period rather than something that continues to affect him.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not really a thing for me. I think right now in this season we&#8217;re doing a very, very good job. In my eyes, I didn&#8217;t really have a ghost of last year,&#8221; he continued.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had a tough season. But I learned a huge amount through it, and honestly, I&#8217;ve come out of that as a much stronger driver and person.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Lawson shared that he is trying to apply those lessons during the 2026 campaign, with Racing Bulls continuing to score consistently in the midfield.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to use all that each week, and I get in the car now to have a good season, and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing. However people view it is up to them.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Racing Bulls has regularly fought for points in the opening half of the season, with Lawson and Lindblad both boasting eye-catching displays. Now, the former insists that maintaining that level is the focus.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At the end of the day, obviously people can look at it however they want, but, at the moment, things are going very, very well, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re focused on continuing, trying to keep that consistency going,&#8221; he added.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s probably the hardest thing in Formula 1; to keep that consistency, especially, I think, in the midfield; you&#8217;re sort of always in all the action.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So for us, it&#8217;s been working very well. But yeah, I would say this year is a good representation of where things are at.&#8221;\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson has brushed aside the notion that his impressive form with Racing Bulls has banished the &#8220;ghosts&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-860080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860080","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=860080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}