Liam Lawson reflects on Red Bull dumping to career best result in Austrian Grand Prix

Monday, 30 June 2025

The story of Liam Lawson’s mentally draining 2025 season has finally taken a plot twist.

Lines of relief ran down the Racing Bulls driver’s face, joining with a smile to match a breakthrough result - a career-best finish of sixth in Monday morning’s Austrian Grand Prix.

If Lawson’s 2025 narrative, to date, remained on brand, his race would have ended in turn three of lap one when he was fortunate to avoid damage as Kimi Antonelli took out Max Verstappen.

But finally, the rain has stopped.

Former F1 driver turned broadcaster Karun Chandhok spoke post-race about the emotional roller-coaster Lawson has undergone since he was thrust into the hot seat for an injured Daniel Ricciardo in 2023.

But most especially this year, his first full season, that was thrown into turmoil following his brutal demotion from Red Bull back to its junior team after just two races.

Chandhok asked: “There's a book in it, one day isn't there?”

To which the Kiwi driver replied: “It's been a very tough year, it's been very emotional,” he told the SKY Sports broadcast.

The 23-year-old has been hit with almost every challenge imaginable across 11 rounds of the F1 championship.

His dumping from Red Bull after two hugely disappointing weekends in Melbourne and China, performance struggles at both teams, poor strategy and a number of instances of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time have cost him dearly.

Following a luckless run with safety cars when finishing 14th in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix back in mid-May, Lawson's engineer, Ernesto Desideri consoled him by saying: “It can’t rain forever.”

In Austria, the sun finally shone on Lawson.

Adding to his frustration, going back even before his first points of the season at Monaco in late May, Lawson has been of the belief that his Racing Bulls machine has the speed to be competitive, but things just haven’t worked out, especially in qualifying.

“It’s been an incredibly tough season, with a lot of potential as well which, unfortunately sometimes in F1, it doesn’t show,” Lawson said in a post-race interview.

“I feel like the speed has been really good recently in practices at the last few races. I felt really good and then it hasn't converted in quali (qualifying),” Lawson said.

The challenge for Lawson and Racing Bulls now is to keep building on the Austrian form and keep banking points, Lawson said.

“It's a great result, but it's only the second points race for us this season and that's not enough, so we need to keep doing this going forward,” he told SKY Sports.