Liam Lawson’s not pretending he’s got one eye on the silly season yet, but he isn’t exactly hiding how he feels about Racing Bulls either.
Asked ahead of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix — round six of the 2026 season — about his plans for 2027, the New Zealander insisted it’s far too early to be having those conversations in earnest. Then came the line that’ll land on every team principal’s desk anyway: if it were up to him, he’d sign an extension “right now”.
It’s a telling bit of honesty from a driver who knows, perhaps better than most, how little control you really have over your own future inside the Red Bull system. Lawson’s first full season in 2025 was described even by those close to him as a rollercoaster, and he only found out in the final week of that campaign that he’d be kept on for 2026. That’s not a situation any driver enjoys — even if they’ll all say the right things in public — because it turns every weekend into an audition with an expiry date.
So far this season, he’s given Racing Bulls plenty of reasons to keep the pen uncapped. Lawson’s opened 2026 with a run of quietly impressive results: seventh place in China, seventh again in Canada, and ninth in Japan. In a midfield that’s been as unforgiving as ever, those points matter. They also shape perception inside a team, where a couple of weekends can swing internal momentum one way or the other.
He’s also holding a clear advantage over his team-mate, Arvid Lindblad. The Swede is the only rookie on the 2026 grid, and Lawson currently sits 11 points ahead — a gap that doesn’t scream domination, but does underline something important: when Racing Bulls has needed one car to bring home the slightly scrappy, slightly opportunistic results that keep a midfield season alive, it’s been Lawson doing it more often.
That’s why his comments land with a slightly sharper edge than a standard contract non-answer. Lawson is doing what drivers do when they feel settled: he’s telling the world he’s happy where he is, and he’s doing it early enough that it’s harder for everyone else to pretend the message wasn’t received.
Still, he’s realistic about the fact the decision isn’t his.
“No,” Lawson said when asked if he’s starting to think about 2027. “It’s definitely early at the moment to talk about it. But at the moment I’m just focused on trying to get the consistency we’ve had from the first part of the year and carry that through the rest of the year.”
When it was put to him that he won’t want to be waiting until December again to find out what he’s doing next season, his answer was equal parts candid and resigned.
“Yeah, but it’s not my choice either! If it was my decision, I’d sign something right now for next year, but it depends on a lot of things,” he said. “And right now, on that side I’m just focused on keeping the consistency for the rest of the year.”
Those “lot of things” are the familiar moving parts around the Red Bull driver ladder, which is never truly still. The programme has a reputation — earned over two decades — for both creating opportunities and moving drivers on ruthlessly when it suits. That history sits behind every conversation a Racing Bulls driver has about their future, whether they admit it or not.
The immediate pressure point for 2027 is Red Bull’s junior pool, with Formula 2 driver Nikola Tsolov currently the most senior name waiting in the wings. Tsolov is third in the F2 standings, having already taken wins this season in the Australia feature race and the Miami sprint. Heading into Monaco, he’s 22 points behind championship leader Gabriele Mini — close enough to be relevant, and crucially, close enough to keep his candidacy in the conversation all year.
Then there’s Yuki Tsunoda, now a reserve for 2026 after being moved out of a race seat by Red Bull. He remains attached to the wider set-up, which keeps another variable on the table if the organisation decides experience is suddenly more valuable than potential.
Lawson, for his part, is doing the only thing that ever really stabilises a career in that environment: banking results and removing excuses. Monaco is the kind of weekend that can either sharpen a reputation or bruise it, especially for a midfield driver trying to prove he belongs in the longer-term picture. Nail qualifying, keep it clean, take the points if they’re there — and the contract talk becomes less about whether you’ll be retained, and more about where the ceiling actually is.
For now, Lawson sounds like a driver who’d happily keep building with Racing Bulls, even if he knows the ground can shift without warning. Whether the team offers him that security early, or makes him sweat again, is the part he can’t control — but he can certainly influence it. Monaco will be another chance to do exactly that.
