Liam Lawson at the Miami Grand Prix. Photo / Red Bull
THREE KEY FACTS
While there were still some positives to take away from his weekend, Liam Lawson could have done without what happened in Miami.
Needing results with Racing Bulls – for his own sake more than anything else – Lawson looked to have turned a corner in the Miami sprint race, only to have his career-best result snatched away by a penalty.
Then, as he looked to right those wrongs in the Grand Prix, a first-lap collision wiped away any chance of scoring his first points of 2025.
As he looks to rebuild at Racing Bulls after his early-season demotion, Lawson will consider the lessons from Miami.
At the moment, it feels like anything that can go wrong for Lawson, will go wrong.
In Melbourne, his efforts were hit by a pneumatic issue with his car. Bahrain? A drag reduction system (DRS) fault in qualifying.
Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen Lawson look to have won points, been penalised, and then have his battery fail in qualifying, leading to a 15th-placed start.
Then, to cap off a frustrating race weekend, Lawson collided with Alpine’s Jack Doohan at turn one and sustained damage that ultimately resulted in retirement on lap 38.
There are few excuses in elite sport, but especially in Formula One. However, you do have to feel for Lawson.
From the first race of the year, he’s struggled to put together a weekend where everything goes right. In fact, he probably hasn’t had that since Singapore 2023, where he knocked Max Verstappen out of qualifying and then took ninth in the Grand Prix.
Don’t get me wrong, you make your own luck in motorsport. But the number of things that seem to just go against Lawson every week make for poor reading.
If he can piece everything together over one weekend, don’t be surprised to see Lawson higher up the grid. However, it is starting to feel like a big “if” at this point.
For the fourth time in three Grand Prix weekends, Lawson was hit with a penalty in Miami.
On lap 15 of the 19-lap sprint race, the Kiwi tangled with Fernando Alonso and forced the two-time world champion into the wall.
Lawson was the lead car at turn 12 when the incident occurred, only for the stewards to rule that because Alonso was in front at turn 11, the Spaniard had the advantage in the corner.
Frustratingly, that’s the third race weekend in a row where Lawson has been on the wrong side of a steward’s interpretation.
In Bahrain, he was hit twice for attempting dive-bomb overtakes on the pair of Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg.
A week later in Saudi Arabia, he was judged to have gained an advantage overtaking Doohan by using the run-off area at turn one, despite the fact he was comfortably clear of the Alpine at the time.
Is Lawson a dirty driver? Not as much as his recent record would suggest. However, he does need to play to the rules that are in place.
Regardless, Lawson gained one penalty point for the clash. Each penalty point lasts for one year on a driver’s super licence, before it’s expunged.
If a driver accrues 12 or more, they incur a ban for one race. At the moment, just six races into 2025, Lawson has six points on his licence, four from this year and two from 2024.
Of active drivers, only Max Verstappen has more, with eight.
In a way, that makes sense. Red Bull backed Lawson to step into their car this year because of his similarity to Verstappen, even if there’s long been rhetoric that the Dutchman can take things too far.
It does make sense that Lawson would be involved in more incidents. As a midfield car, you’re obviously going to be in plenty of traffic that the drivers at the front and back aren’t exposed to.
But regardless, Lawson won’t get far if he keeps picking up penalties the way he has in recent races.
As was the case in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain before it, Lawson should at least take some confidence from the fact he’s being penalised while trying to overtake.
There would be more to worry about if he wasn’t attempting those moves.
While there were few positives across the Miami weekend, Lawson’s efforts in the sprint were admirable.
The Miami International Autodrome is not a great track for out-and-out racing. Opportunities to overtake are almost entirely restricted to the three DRS zones, one in each sector.
But in the sprint race on Saturday morning, Lawson started 14th and moved to ninth by the end of the first corner alone.
It was probably for that reason that he felt the confidence to go for a similar move in the Grand Prix, getting across Doohan.
However, the main difference between the two races was that Lawson started 14th in the sprint and had better access to the inside racing line into the corner. Doohan, who started 14th in the Grand Prix, couldn’t react in time and clipped the Kiwi.
On top of that, Lawson should actually get credit for carrying on, even when all hope was lost.
Formula One drivers are a stubborn lot. It’s not completely uncommon for a driver to want to retire from a race altogether, as soon as they’re slightly inconvenienced.
In Miami, Lawson and Racing Bulls knew he was done from the first corner, but managed another 38 laps.
If anything, that shows Lawson clearly still feels he has a point to prove.
You should never gauge too much of anything in life by what’s said in social media comments sections.
In saying that, though, there does seem to be an increasing amount of anti-Lawson rhetoric, from both New Zealand and abroad.
Make no mistake, Racing Bulls’ VCARB02 car is not one that should consistently challenge for points.
Red Bull’s sister side finished eighth in the constructors championship last year, and occupy that exact same spot six races into 2025.
Yes, there might be an expectation for fans – especially those new to watching Formula One – that Lawson will be able to compete for points.
However, Racing Bulls is a development side. Any points they score are a bonus. In the entirety of last season, the team only scored points in 11 of 24 races.
The Kiwi hasn’t had the easiest time of things in 2025, that’s for certain. But the people at Red Bull employed to make decisions over drivers have repeatedly backed him to be their man.
That shouldn’t change because of a couple of indifferent weekends.
Red Bull might just have a problem on their hands. It’s been reported on more than one occasion that Max Verstappen’s contract has certain out clauses.
In his early days in Formula One, it was understood that one of those clauses was if Red Bull finishes third or lower in the constructors championship, he can leave. This season, it’s been reported that if he’s lower than second in the drivers championship at the summer break, he can leave.
While either of those alternatives would come down to Verstappen’s personal choice, this season has so far seen that either could be possible.
The reigning champion is currently third in the drivers championship, 16 points off second-placed Lando Norris. Meanwhile, Red Bull hold an 11-point advantage over Ferrari in the constructors standings.
Should Verstappen part ways with Red Bull, it’s not out of the question that the former world champions have two seats to fill in 2026, given there’s no certainty around Yuki Tsunoda either, considering his links to departing engine supplier Honda.
That, then, makes Lawson’s comparison to teammate Isack Hadjar all the more important.
If – admittedly a big if – Red Bull need two drivers, you’d think at least one of them would come from Racing Bulls.
So far this year, the 20-year-old French driver has been a standout in his rookie season. Points finishes in Japan and Saudi Arabia mean only Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and Haas’ Ollie Bearman have scored more among the rookies.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that Lawson does still have a future with the senior side. However, he would need to create history by being the first driver to be dropped and then return to the senior side.
That’s not going to happen, though, if he’s constantly being beaten by his teammate.
Before he needs to be scoring points, Lawson needs to be bettering what Hadjar does – and then go from there.
Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.
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