Liam Lawson admits that securing his seat on the 2026 Formula 1 grid is “probably more relief than anything right now” ahead of the final race of the season in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Kiwi will again compete with Racing Bulls next season, where he will be joined by F1 rookie Arvid Lindblad, with Isack Hadjar taking Yuki Tsunoda’s spot at Red Bull<\/a> alongside Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n “It’s probably more relief than anything right now. It’s also nice going into this weekend knowing, I can’t really remember the last time I had that,” said Lawson on media day ahead of the final race of the season.<\/p>\n “I’ll try and enjoy the weekend a little bit but I think it’s very positive and exciting to go into next year and spend the off-season with a proper plan.”<\/p>\n Lawson<\/a> confirmed he found out his future “just after the race in Qatar”, with Racing Bulls<\/a> Team Principal Alan Permane the one to break the good news to his driver.<\/p>\n Lawson has endured a mixed 2025 campaign, one which began with two races in the senior Red Bull squad before being demoted back to Racing Bulls after struggling for performance.<\/p>\n Over the 21 Grands Prix since, Lawson has finished in the points seven times with a best result of P5 in Baku, all of which has helped Racing Bulls to sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.<\/p>\n When asked if he thought his Red Bull demotion happened for a good reason, with Tsunoda now left without a race seat in 2026, Lawson replied: “I definitely think about that phrase a lot and I always try and tell myself that sometimes, in normally the bad moments.<\/p>\n “I think at the start of the year obviously I was having a lot of those thoughts with what was going on but at the same time it’s hard to say that now because I think to be in this sport we all believe in ourselves. You couldn’t be here if you thought that somebody was better than you.<\/p>\n “I would have liked to have thought that with the right amount of time I would have got my head around it, honestly. I don’t even remember them [two races with Red Bull] they were so short.<\/p>\n “I do think there are a lot of things that happened this year that have made me a lot stronger and I’ve learnt a lot from.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson admits that securing his seat on the 2026 Formula 1 grid is “probably more relief than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-168279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}