Liam Lawson isn’t pretending Formula 1 is a charity, or that teams should hand out seats on sentiment. But when the New Zealander looks back at how quickly both he and Jack Doohan were discarded last season, he can’t shake the feeling the sport is eating its own young a little too eagerly.
Speaking on the *High Performance* podcast, Lawson described the aftermath of his brief Red Bull stint — two races, then straight back to Racing Bulls — as a period where the decisions were already made and the emotional damage was simply something he had to absorb.
“All this stuff was happening, and there was nothing I could do about it once it had happened,” Lawson said. “So I was obviously frustrated, devastated at the time. But there was nothing I could do about it anymore.”
The subtext is familiar to anyone who’s watched Red Bull’s driver programme over the last decade: the ladder is steep, the spotlight is harsh, and the trapdoor opens fast. Yet even within that context, Lawson’s case last year felt extreme. He’d earned his shot on the back of a six-race audition with Red Bull’s second team at the end of 2024, winning out in a shootout that involved Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda for the chance to partner Max Verstappen. Then, with barely enough time to unpack, it was over — Tsunoda moved into the Red Bull seat and Lawson was sent back to Racing Bulls.
Doohan’s story was harsher still. Confirmed by Alpine in August 2024, he arrived with the expectation of a proper runway. Instead, five races into what should’ve been his first full season, he was replaced by Franco Colapinto. And unlike Lawson, there was no sister-team safety net waiting on the other side of the door.
It’s that part — the speed of judgement — that’s stuck with Lawson. He’s careful not to paint himself as a victim, but he’s blunt about the principle.
“There’s a lot of guys that got badly treated, and unfairly treated in Formula One, and we’re out,” he said. “Over the years there’s many cases where you’d argue that wasn’t fair.
“Jack Doohan, somebody who did five races, that is not fair to judge somebody. I had two in a Red Bull, but even five races as a whole is not fair to judge somebody in Formula One… in a season like last year.”
In a paddock that loves to talk about “preparation” and “readiness”, Lawson’s point lands awkwardly. The modern grid is stacked with drivers who arrive polished, well-drilled and data-literate. But F1 seats aren’t awarded for being 95% ready — they’re won by being good enough at the right political moment, and then keeping your footing when the ground moves. The problem is that the same teams demanding instant impact are often the ones most comfortable pulling the plug before the sample size means anything.
Lawson admits the only thing that stopped the whole episode becoming a career-derailer was the fact he still had a drive at all. That perspective — that it could’ve been worse — has become his coping mechanism, and, in a way, his fuel.
“It’s a very normal thing to say, but it’s just focus on the things that you can control,” he explained. “Going, ‘okay, look, it’s all done, you’re still in Formula One’.
“I still had a drive, so that was what I tried to really focus on… You still have an opportunity to prove yourself here, you still have an opportunity to build a future in Formula One… without focusing on the fact that I lost the dream drive that I wanted since I was young.”
That last line is the one that gives the game away. For Lawson, Red Bull wasn’t just a promotion — it was the childhood destination. Losing it after two races doesn’t just bruise the ego; it forces a young driver to rewrite the story they’ve been telling themselves for years. There are plenty who never recover from that, especially when the noise starts: the whispers about confidence, the armchair psych evaluations, the assumption that if you didn’t survive the Red Bull seat you must’ve cracked.
Lawson says the experience has changed him — not in the motivational-poster way drivers sometimes reach for, but in the blunt reality that F1 now demands resilience almost as a technical skill.
“Whenever I think about it, I feel like I’m a far better driver, and a far more resilient driver,” he said. “And especially in today’s Formula One, with how much outside noise there is… to be good in Formula 1 right now, you have to be able to drive the car fast, but everybody can, and it’s all really that other stuff that you have to be… resilient to.”
He’s right, and Red Bull’s history is the obvious exhibit. Daniil Kvyat being removed in 2016 to make space for Verstappen. Pierre Gasly lasting 12 races. Alex Albon getting a year and a half. Lawson lasting two. Tsunoda, before this latest shuffle, getting 22 races. Some of those calls worked out for the organisation; some didn’t. But the pattern is the point: once a driver becomes a variable in a bigger plan, their timeline stops being their own.
Lawson’s frustration, then, isn’t just about what happened to him — it’s about what it says about the sport’s current appetite for churn. Two races, five races: those aren’t auditions, they’re coin flips dressed up as evaluations. And in a year where several teams were already restless, impatient, and eyeing the next option before the current one had settled into the cockpit, Lawson and Doohan became the most public examples of how quickly “the future” can turn into “the past”.
For Lawson at least, there’s still a chance to turn the bruises into leverage. He’s still on the grid, still in the fight, and perhaps more importantly, now fully aware of what this sport will do if you give it an excuse. That’s a grim lesson to learn so early — but in 2026 Formula 1, it might be the most valuable one.
