The last New Zealander to race in Formula 1 was Brendon Hartley, who finished with Toro Rosso, a junior team to Red Bull.
OPINION
Liam Lawson was subjected to an almost embarrassing level of public scrutiny before finally being confirmed at the Racing Bulls team early on Friday morning.
For months, Red Bull has been wringing its hands over its driver line up, before finally punting loveable but mediocreAussie Daniel Ricciardo and giving Lawson the F1 race contract he deserved.
In Singapore – five days before Lawson’s deal was announced – Red Bull boss Christian Horner sounded unsure about his new signing.
“The question is how good is Liam? And sometimes difficult decisions have to be made in order to get those answers,” he said, likely after the actual decision to pull the ejector handle on Ricciardo had been made, but not publicly announced.
“We’re having to look further down the road. We’ve got Liam Lawson on the bench. We’re not quite sure... looking at the likes of [Franco] Colapinto, [Ollie] Bearman and [Kimi] Antonelli. Is he at that level? Only time will tell.”
Talk about being led along. Signing Lawson should have been a no-brainer.
For most of the sport’s observers, Lawson did more than enough in the five races he stood in for Ricciardo last season – by immediately matching his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, and scoring the team’s best result up to that point in Singapore.
As frustrating as being on the sidelines has been for Lawson this year, the hero-to-zero-to-hero nature of the Formula 1 rumour mill must have been maddening.
Seasoned observers of the sport can see little logic in Red Bull’s recent driver line-up decisions.
Red Bull’s driver programme is overseen by Austrian Helmut Marko, who, at 81, is barely six months younger than Joe Biden.
While the sitting US President was gently eased out as Democrat candidate for November’s election, Marko shows no signs of retiring, despite some seriously wobbly calls of late.
For example: based on the evidence of a single Grand Prix (Monza 2022), Marko elevated Dutchman Nyck de Vries into the Alpha Tauri team, fulltime.
Marko then went cold on de Vries within half a dozen rounds of the 2023 season, and he was sacked to make way for Ricciardo, who is now being fired to make way for Lawson.
Seven years after his career was almost ended after being dumped by the Red Bull Junior Programme in 2010, Hartley was thrown the chance of a lifetime by the company, being plucked from sportscars and placed in Formula 1, finishing the 2017 season, then racing fulltime in 2018.
After a near catastrophic mix-up with Toro Rosso teammate Pierre Gasly in Azerbaijan, then a massive crash in practice for the next race in Spain, Hartley went to Monaco – the sixth round of that season – with stories filtering out that Red Bull was considering dropping him.
His card was marked, his reputation in F1 never recovered, and he was dropped by Red Bull at the end of the year, despite clearly improving as the season progressed. What he needed was more time, and a team who supported him. The next year the team fielded Daniil Kvyat and Alex Albon, two drivers who’d also been dropped by Red Bull earlier in their careers.
Brendon Hartley was the last Kiwi to drive in Formula One. Photo / Photosport
Lawson will be only too aware of how fickle, brutal and downright unfair life as a Red Bull driver can be, and that the hard work starts now. Being solid, like Ricciardo, won’t be enough. The challenge will be to perform at an extraordinary level every weekend.
If he can thoroughly eclipse Honda-favourite Tsunoda in the final half dozen races of this season, he could very realistically find himself promoted to the senior Red Bull team alongside Max Verstappen, at the expense of Sergio Perez, a driver in consistently shocking form, having not finished better than sixth since May.
Complicating matters is the car Lawson will climb into in a few weeks in Austin for the United States Grand Prix will make it difficult to shine.
The Racing Bulls team bungled upgrades from the Spanish Grand Prix onward, which has only seen the team get slower and slower, and risk getting gobbled up by their midfield rivals.
In getting a fulltime drive, Lawson has climbed to the peak of one mountain, to see another emerge on the horizon.
