‘Tune it out and back yourself’: Lawson’s blunt memo to Hadjar as Red Bull chatter grows
Liam Lawson isn’t dressing it up. With Isack Hadjar suddenly a live contender for the most unforgiving seat in Formula 1, the Racing Bulls driver says the young French-Algerian needs to ignore the circus and back the instincts that got him here in the first place.
Asked in Baku about the noise swirling around Red Bull’s second car, Lawson didn’t bite on the drama. He’s been through the revolving door himself this year — promoted to the senior team after Sergio Perez’s exit, then sent back to Faenza after a rough opening couple of rounds — and knows how quickly the narrative can whip around that garage.
“Prepare properly and shut out the chatter,” was the gist of Lawson’s guidance. Don’t let anyone else define what that seat is. And above all: have faith in yourself.
It’s simple advice, but pointed. The Verstappen-adjacent cockpit has carried a reputation for chewing up promising careers. Yuki Tsunoda got the call after Lawson’s short Red Bull stint fizzled — a retirement in Melbourne, no points across the China sprint and Grand Prix — and has been fighting for traction ever since. For Hadjar, that cautionary tale sits on one shoulder. His recent form sits on the other.
The 20-year-old’s rookie season began in the worst possible way: a lapse before the lights even went out in Australia ended with a wrecked car on the formation lap and a long walk back to the garage. He regrouped. The first points came three races later, and then came the one that changed the conversation — a poised drive at Zandvoort that turned Lando Norris’s late retirement into a first F1 podium. He backed it up with tidy execution at Monza, and by the time the circus rolled into Baku he was sitting ninth in the standings. Suddenly, the kid who cried in Melbourne is the kid Red Bull might put next to Max Verstappen.
Lawson’s been living in that slipstream. His route to a full-time seat has been winding — an assured five-race cameo for AlphaTauri in 2023 after Daniel Ricciardo’s wrist injury, another six appearances in 2024 when Ricciardo was dropped, then the big call from Red Bull following Perez’s departure. It was, in the cold light, too little time to settle and too small a sample to convince. But he’s not using that as a sob story, or a warning flare.
From his perspective, the trap isn’t the environment; it’s the echo chamber. “People talk up how hard it is. Maybe it’s overcooked,” Lawson suggested. “We’re all here because we believe we belong. You have to keep that belief.”
Strip away the headlines and that’s the real test of the job. The second Red Bull seat demands lap-by-lap clarity more than grand statements — no point overdriving to prove a point, no point reading the tea leaves on a Tuesday. That happens to line up with Hadjar’s recent, more measured profile: fewer lunges, more finishes, smart positioning when the race comes to him.
None of this means the choice is simple. Red Bull know better than most that the rookie glow can fade in a car that responds brutally to tiny deficits. But the grid also doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. If Hadjar’s name is on the shortlist — and it is — the message from the guy pitted 20 metres away is to keep the blinkers on.
“He’s done a good job this year,” Lawson said of his teammate. “If that opportunity comes, focus on the work and ignore the rest. Only the guys who’ve sat in that car really know what it’s like.”
Right now, the Racing Bulls garage is an odd mix of audition and apprenticeship. Lawson is rebuilding after a brief, bruising brush with the big team. Hadjar is accelerating into the conversation with each clean Sunday. And Red Bull, as ever, is watching both with a cold eye and a stopwatch.
Baku has a way of stress-testing drivers’ headspace — big stops, tight walls, and a race that rarely runs to script. If Hadjar handles that with the same tidy hands he showed in Zandvoort and Monza, the whispers will only get louder. The trick, as Lawson tells it, is to treat them like white noise.
