{"id":60255,"date":"2025-08-11T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T23:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/60255\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T23:19:10","slug":"f1-news-liam-lawson-not-focused-on-2026-red-bull-seat-amid-strong-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/60255\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news: Liam Lawson not focused on 2026 Red Bull seat amid strong form"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lawson
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLiam Lawson says he isn’t focussed on a possible Red Bull return in 2026. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n

The New Zealander began the year in one of F1\u2019s most coveted seats, promoted to partner Max Verstappen<\/a> following Sergio Perez\u2019s departure at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

The move was seen as a bold statement of faith from Red Bull, with Lawson having impressed during substitute appearances for the junior team in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n

However, the promotion proved short-lived. After two challenging races spent at the back of the grid, Red Bull u-turned, sending Lawson back to Racing Bulls<\/a> while promoting Yuki Tsunoda in his place.<\/p>\n

Since returning to Racing Bulls, Lawson has collected 20 points from a string of competitive drives, including a career-best sixth place at the Austrian Grand Prix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That tally leaves him just two points shy of rookie teammate Isack Hadjar and comfortably ahead of Tsunoda, who has managed only 10 points since moving to the senior squad.<\/p>\n

Despite the statistical edge over his former teammate \u2014 and growing speculation over Tsunoda\u2019s long-term prospects with Red Bull \u2014 Lawson is refusing to be drawn into talk about his own future.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, in terms of my future, it\u2019s been so busy this year that I\u2019m not really thinking about it,\u201d he told PlanetF1.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m focused on having some good races. Obviously, we\u2019ve had some recently, but three of them isn\u2019t enough over 12 races, or however many it\u2019s been, so we need to do more of this, and then we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old was the best finishing Red Bull-supported driver at last weekend\u2019s Hungarian Grand Prix, placing eighth, just ahead of his former teammate Verstappen<\/a>, who finished ninth.<\/p>\n

Lawson said his two-race spell alongside Verstappen at Red Bull at least offered a rare glimpse into the level of precision and performance that has made the Dutchman a four-time world champion, but the brevity of the stint meant he left with fewer insights than he had hoped for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very excited to have that opportunity to basically see everything that he was doing in detail,\u201d Lawson told RacingNews365.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I think the thing is, to be honest, we have so much data shared across teams at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very simple data, but as a driver, it\u2019s the main stuff that we\u2019re looking at, speed traces, you know, where somebody\u2019s braking, throttle places, gears, things like that that we use.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually can see across the grid what people are doing. So I already compare with Max a lot to see how he\u2019s approaching corners and things like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it was the detailed stuff that you wouldn\u2019t get across teams that I was excited to have, but in two weekends, it\u2019s very hard to take too much from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his two races for Red Bull, Lawson failed to finish in Australia and finished 12th in China, while Verstappen finished second and fourth respectively.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson says he isn’t focussed on a possible Red Bull return in 2026. Image: XPB Images The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,8166,9734,3803,20447,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-60255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-liam-lawson","tag-racing-bulls","tag-red-bull","tag-slot1_f1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}