Buy tickets<\/a><\/p>\nLawson said he had no warning he was about to be moved out of Red Bull, despite rumours beginning to circulate around the Chinese Grand Prix weekend.<\/p>\n
Asked if any part of him expected the decision, Lawson said he had absolutely no idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember thinking there was earlier a couple of rumours around that weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the start there started to be a rumour about the Japanese Grand Prix coming up, Yuki [Tsunoda] is Japanese, do they do that?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I honestly remember trusting my team so much and I was like, that\u2019s insane that they\u2019re even saying that. Classic F1 rumours.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I went back and I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawson said the circumstances around his final race for Red Bull made the decision even harder to process.<\/p>\n
He explained that Red Bull had elected to make a radical set-up change for the Chinese Grand Prix, with the aim of finding a direction that could help both him and the team after the difficult season opener in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d spoken about basically 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,\u201d Lawson explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cMax [Verstappen] wasn\u2019t happy. Everyone was like, this is not working and we need to try something quite radical here.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so we all kind of had a meeting on Saturday night and it was decided I was on board with it, because the idea was let\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.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we decided, okay, let\u2019s start from the pit lane and basically radically change the car. We made a massive change you would never do on a race weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I ran it. It sucked for this race. The car was so, so hard to drive and basically destroyed our race. But honestly, I didn\u2019t care at the time, because I was like, there\u2019s a reason we\u2019ve done this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawson said he then returned to the United Kingdom expecting to complete simulator work before receiving the call that he was being replaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018What?\u2019 If you 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 setup that you\u2019ve run a weekend\u2019. What do you think I would have said?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat, at the time, was like a really hard thing to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawson said he did not have time to properly process the decision ahead of the next race in Japan.<\/p>\n
He added the public reaction made the period harder, particularly as criticism grew around whether he deserved to remain in F1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was at the time so much noise around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much people think I sucked, and why I shouldn\u2019t be in Formula 1, and all these kinds of things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling, and all this stuff, and like they were doing it to protect me, and that honestly just could not be further from what it was actually like.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/XPB_1331934_HiRes.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson in the Red Bull in China 2025. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n
Lawson accepted he could have performed better but maintained two race weekends was not enough to properly judge him.<\/p>\n
He said his preparation had been limited, while China was a sprint weekend at a circuit he had never raced at.<\/p>\n
Lawson said he tried to focus on the fact he still had an F1 seat and an opportunity to rebuild, rather than the loss of what he described as his dream drive.<\/p>\n
He also reaffirmed Max Verstappen was privately supportive during the fallout from his Red Bull exit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to a lot of people during that time, but I spoke to him about it. He was very supportive,\u201d Lawson said.<\/p>\n
Lawson said the experience had changed him as a driver and made him more resilient, while also helping him become a \u201csmarter\u201d driver this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are situations where there\u2019s being a smart driver, and I feel like this year I\u2019m trying to do more of that as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut also keeping that you can\u2019t let people walk all over you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interview also turned emotional when Lawson spoke about the sacrifices made by his family during his junior career.<\/p>\n
He said his parents had found a card written by his younger brother when they were children, asking their father whether he would spend more time with him if he also liked racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDear dad, if I like racing, will you spend more time with me? Like Liam,\u201d Lawson recalled the card saying.<\/p>\n
Lawson said the discovery underlined the scale of what his family had given up to help him reach F1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ll never be able to almost repay the amount of sacrifice that, and it\u2019s not just about just money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike for my siblings and family that have just given up so much. Like time with my dad and never going on holiday. Never doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that ultimately, through all the hardships of getting to the top, he was grateful for the support and wanted to use his time in the sport to encourage young racers from parts of the world such as New Zealand and Australia to believe it was possible to achieve their goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what my parents and my dad told me when I was young, if you genuinely believe in something, if you want to do this and you believe in it and you work hard enough, it doesn\u2019t matter what anybody says, you can do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson has opened up about the toll of his F1 dream, as well as his axing from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5704,111,139,69,20114,12362,1732,213],"class_list":["post-489793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-liam-lawson","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing-bulls","tag-red-bull","tag-slot4","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489793","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=489793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Liam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/XPB_1417330_HiRes.jpg\")
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