{"id":495426,"date":"2026-06-25T20:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/495426\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T20:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T20:42:13","slug":"liam-lawson-very-happy-despite-report-hell-be-replaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/495426\/","title":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson ‘very happy’ despite report he’ll be replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand F1 driver Liam Lawson says he’s feeling good and it’s too early to be talking about his future.<\/p>\n

This weekend Lawson returns to the site of his first big result in Formula 1 with some confidence that it could happen again.<\/p>\n

A Spanish report this week suggested F2 driver Nikola Tsolov had been guaranteed a seat in one of the two Red Bull teams Formula 1 next year, either replacing a retiring Max Verstappen or Lawson.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the Austrian Grand Prix Lawson was asked about where he was at and if there had been any discussion about his future.<\/p>\n

“It’s very early days, it has been a very good season so far, obviously a lot to learn with these new cars and we’re doing that every weekend and we’re in a good place but obviously trying to keep that momentum going,” Lawson told F1.<\/p>\n

“It’s very early days for those kind of conversations but I’m honestly very happy and we all feel in a good place.”<\/p>\n

The 24 year old is tenth in the drivers’ standings, having picked up points in five of the<\/a> last six rounds and there is no reason to think that won’t continue this week.<\/p>\n

He has been one of the success stories of 2026.<\/p>\n

“I feel I’ve learnt a lot over the last 12 months especially. Things are working well at the moment.”<\/p>\n

Round eight of the championship is at the Red Bull Ring in Austria the place where Lawson had his breakthrough result in 2025.<\/p>\n

Strategy worked out for him that day, but in 2026 confidence and a good car have been to the fore for the Racing Bulls driver.<\/p>\n

Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane feels they’re in a strong position with the team sixth in the constructors’ championship.<\/p>\n

“The VCARB 03, with its latest updates, has proved to work well on a variety of circuit types and we head to Austria with confidence, knowing that if we put a strong weekend together, we can come away with more points.”<\/p>\n

The Red Bull Ring circuit is one of the shorter tracks on the championship at 4.3km and includes slow and fast corners. However it is generally a high speed track with overtaking opportunities.<\/p>\n

“Here it is always very, very close so the way we execute through the weekend is very important,” Lawson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand F1 driver Liam Lawson says he’s feeling good and it’s too early to be talking about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-495426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495426","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=495426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}