Liam Lawson isn’t buying the “team leader” tag just yet. With Racing Bulls bringing in teenage hotshot Arvid Lindblad for 2026 and a new ruleset rebooting the entire grid, the New Zealander is keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground.
“Let’s be real, I’ve done one full season,” Lawson told media as the year wound down. “You learn a huge amount in that time, but there’s a lot more to come.” It’s a fair point. His Formula 1 story has been anything but conventional: an eye-catching five-race cameo in 2023 as Daniel Ricciardo’s injury stand-in, a reserve year that ended with six late-season starts in 2024, and finally a first full campaign in 2025 — one that began with two rounds in the senior Red Bull seat before he was shuffled back to the sister outfit.
Once settled at Racing Bulls, Lawson found rhythm and results in the second half of 2025, enough for the team to lock him in before Abu Dhabi. On the other side of the garage next season arrives Lindblad, the highly rated Brit fast-tracked through Red Bull’s system. It’s an intriguing pairing: one driver with a season and a bit of F1 in his pocket, the other making his debut at the very moment the sport changes shape.
That’s why Lawson is neither posturing as a de facto leader nor shying away from responsibility. “I expect the team to lean on me a bit,” he said. “But it’s a new car for me too. My job is to take what I learned this year and be as ready as possible for what’s coming.”
What’s coming is the 2026 rule reset — smaller, lighter cars, aggressive energy management, active aero, and the Ford-badged Red Bull Powertrains era beginning for the Red Bull camp. Racing Bulls will unveil its new challenger in Detroit on January 15 alongside Ford, a symbolic curtain-raiser before the most comprehensive technical shake-up in years. If you’re Lawson, that means a short off-season and a long to-do list.
“Pit stop at home,” he smiled of his holiday plan. “See the family in New Zealand, then we’re straight back into it in early January. Next year’s going to be very busy, especially the first part. The driving style will be very different and it’ll take time to get on top of these cars.”
The quiet confidence is telling. Lawson’s 2025 taught him how quickly F1 can move around you — different teams, different expectations, and the relentless grind of a calendar that punishes hesitation. The flipside is that he’s already shown the knack for adapting, and Racing Bulls clearly believes there’s more ceiling to reach.
As for Lindblad, the teenager’s arrival injects the kind of energy this program has always thrived on. There’s no lack of speed in Red Bull’s pipeline; the trick is turning raw pace into points when the rules are ripping up the old reference points. That makes Lawson’s lived-in racecraft valuable in ways a stat sheet might not show. He’s not pretending he’s the finished article — he’s not even pretending he’s the elder statesman — but in a season where experience will mainly be measured in how fast you decode a brand-new formula, he’s earned the right to be the baseline.
Lawson frames 2026 not as a coronation, but as another test. And that’s probably the healthiest way to approach it. The team gets a driver who knows what he doesn’t know, a rookie who’s unafraid of a fight, and a fresh car in a fresh era with a heavyweight partner in its corner. Racing Bulls won’t say it out loud, but they’re expecting both drivers to grow up fast.
Call him senior, call him steady — Lawson would rather just be quick.
