How Lawson let mask of defiance slip in Austria post-script and exposed Red Bull's conundrum

Liam Lawson looked completely drained in the wake of a sizzling encounter at the Red Bull Ring. Appearing on Sky Sports' portable paddock 'studio', the Kiwi was flushed, wearing his cool-vest like a tank-top, with sweat permeating from his shock of tousled, frost-tipped hair to add a wet-look gel effect (sans the plastic tub of green goop) to his early-2000s boy-band aesthetic. And he was caught off-guard when interviewed by Sky's trio of Natalie Pinkham, Bernie Collins and Karun Chandhok.

When the menagerie of drivers cycles through the TV pen, the written-media enclosure and pitlane TV duties, it will encounter the same questions three times and answer them almost identically. The drivers will talk about "the pace", "the window", "maximising/extracting the performance" and how it's important "to work a lot before the next race". Cookie-cutter answers to cookie-cutter questions.

Once the visibly tired Lawson had flopped upon the sun-struck stool next to Chandhok, Pinkham expertly put some top-spin on a standard question, letting it curl around at the end to catch the Kiwi slightly by surprise. It was simple, but effective: "How are your emotions right now?"

It sounds like an unspectacular opener, but it's a specific throw that needs to meet a specific target. You probably couldn't ask Lance Stroll how his emotions were after finishing 14th, because he probably doesn't really have any value to add on the matter. Equally, you probably couldn't have done the same with George Russell either; he might convey his disappointment at finishing fifth, but equally that Mercedes' miscue in the Austrian heat was entirely expected.

But Lawson has been through the wringer this year, and the right question hit the right target. He'd got the Red Bull seat that he'd dreamed of to conclude a whirlwind final three months to 2024, in which he'd replaced Daniel Ricciardo and then Sergio Perez in, effectively, the space of about nine weeks. But the Red Bull journey was even shorter; by the end of April, he'd been waved back through the revolving door.

In reaction to the unabating questions about his Red Bull future, his demotion and his performances over 2025, there has been an air − no, a gale-force wind − of defiance to Liam Lawson this year. Never shy of baring his teeth on-track, the Kiwi has spent the year with his back to the wall and has flashed the gnashers to bat off the more pointed questions. When his Red Bull seat was under threat after just two races, with Yuki Tsunoda publicly angling for Red Bull to give him an opportunity, Lawson's combative riposte was to say that he'd beaten the Japanese driver handily in the junior categories. It wasn't entirely true, of course; their results were about 50/50 across the range of lower formulae they'd competed in together, but Lawson wasn't about to get bogged down in the statistics.

Lawson was dejected after being dropped by Red Bull after two rounds

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And, when Lawson had the carpet pulled from under him after just two races, he scoffed at the notion that he'd lost confidence as a result. There was a tangible sense of pragmatism and bravado in his public image, the "mustn't grumble" merging with the "I'm still great" to develop a shade of aloof rebellion against the narrative. And while this perfectly meshed with the perception of Liam Lawson, a throwback racer with little regard or respect for his equals on track, it also served the purpose of protecting him from the world and its speculative gaze.

Lawson was careful not to convey that he was hugely hurt by the Red Bull ordeal in the races that followed it, or that the delicate balance between id, ego and super-ego had been knocked off-balance. Although dropping down to Racing Bulls represented an apparently comfortable crash mat, the fall was no less injurious. Loss is loss, and Lawson lost his opportunity with Red Bull. Upon taking his place with Racing Bulls again, the balance he was used to was no longer there; Isack Hadjar was on form and continued to demonstrate impressive results in his debut season while Lawson had to become acquainted with a different car with limited testing mileage available.

In Monaco it looked as though Lawson had finally found the breakthrough, as he belatedly got off the mark for the season. However, while he did an excellent job of making Racing Bulls' hold-up strategy work and bought himself two free pitstops in the process, Lawson didn't quite kick on in Spain and Canada.

"It's been a very tough year. It's been very emotional and very, very tough just to secure a result. To do that today is very, very cool" Liam Lawson

But his race in Austria? Exceptional; Lawson took every opportunity that came his way and made a one-stop strategy work. In narrowly evading the Max Verstappen-Andrea Kimi Antonelli clash at Turn 3, he'd kept himself in play. By extending his stint on the medium tyre, he maintained an important niche of track position ahead of the Saubers and the Haases – both teams hungry for points and on the warpath. And, despite carting Fernando Alonso along in DRS range for pretty much the full 70 laps, Lawson held him at arm's length and then bolted at the end when Gabriel Bortoleto came to play. It was a subtle race, but one plotted to perfection – and one that Lawson has been waiting all year to achieve.

Which brings us to the post-script. When Pinkham asked him to describe his emotions, those moments of 2025 seemed to flash before him – like a black-and-white Pathé newsreel of traumatic events and triggers.

"It's...I don't know. It's very, very cool. I'm a bit lost, to be honest," he said, words faltering amid the heat and the relief, before composing himself for the, by now, well-versed recap of his afternoon. "It's been a very, very tough race, especially after lap one. I don't even know how I survived it, to be honest. I thought when I saw Kimi coming, I was like, 'Okay, this is over'.

After surviving the first lap as Antonelli crashed into Verstappen, Lawson guided his Racing Bulls to sixth place

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

"But somehow we got out of it, and the speed was good. We made the one-stop work, which was the key today for us. With today's temperatures, I wasn't sure about it. But the team knew."

Chandhok served next, noting that Lawson's F1 career had been something of a rollercoaster. Although a ubiquitous allegory for life's ups and downs, there really is little better – no other theme-park ride or fairground attraction comes close, perhaps apart from the merry-go-round. Drafted into the AlphaTauri line-up when Daniel Ricciardo broke his hand at Zandvoort in 2023, Lawson showed the grit and steel that was perhaps expected of his Antipodean counterpart in his flat-footed return to F1. But it was Ricciardo, not Lawson, who was retained for 2024.

While Ricciardo huffed and puffed to put himself in the frame for a potential Red Bull drive, there were few remnants of the smiling assassin of old. The honey badger that tore at jugulars, through his deftness on the brakes for overtakes that perfectly skirted the border of dive-bomb territory, had lost its teeth. Lawson's hunger carried him into the seat Ricciardo had aimed for.

"It's been a very tough year," Lawson conceded, perhaps for the first time this year his wall of defiance had been breached. "It's been very emotional and very, very tough just to secure a result. To do that today is very, very cool."

He continued: "It's obviously one good weekend, but I feel like the speed's been really, really good recently and in practice at the last few races, I felt really good – and then it hasn't converted in quali. So it was nice to do that yesterday, but in the back of my mind, I obviously knew that today was the important one. And for us, we now need to just keep this momentum going forward."

The bottom line is that Lawson is a very good grand prix driver. It's easy to forget that he's only done 22 races, as his bit-part role across the last two seasons has lent him a degree of familiarity in the current field. And as Yuki Tsunoda (another very good grand prix driver) toils in the second Red Bull, Lawson's actually been dealt a bit of a favour. Of course, doing two races with a title-winning team only to lose the drive was a colossal gut-punch that took a few weeks to recover from, but Lawson did two things in Austria: beat his team-mate, and end the day as the lead driver in the Red Bull family (helped by Verstappen's DNF, of course).

And it's come none too soon. As Red Bull primes Arvid Lindblad for an FP1 drive at Silverstone, and considers the identity of Max Verstappen's next team-mate, Lawson will simply hope for a bit of continuity into next year. Thus, the New Zealander has two aims: to beat Hadjar as convincingly as he did in Austria and to maintain his place on the 2026 grid. Even if another Red Bull opportunity is not forthcoming, the demotion is not completely deleterious to a long and prosperous career in F1. Just ask Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon.

Lawson knows what he needs to do to keep his spot in F1 - and his Austrian GP performance was a vital boost towards that target

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