Liam Lawson’s form has finally found a groove, but his gaze isn’t drifting toward the big blue garage just yet.
After a bruising start to 2025 with Red Bull and an early-season switch back to Racing Bulls, the Kiwi has steadied the ship with three points finishes in his last four starts — and every time he’s seen the flag, he hasn’t been lower than eighth. It’s a sharp upswing from those early 12th-place bests in China and Saudi Arabia, and it’s pulled him right alongside Isack Hadjar in the standings, separated by just two points.
That kind of momentum normally cues the Red Bull rumor machine into overdrive, especially with Yuki Tsunoda struggling alongside Max Verstappen and widely tipped to be on the move as Honda heads to Aston Martin for 2026. The obvious question: is Lawson lining himself up for a return to the senior team?
Not if you ask him. “Honestly, in terms of my future, it’s been so busy this year that I’m not really thinking about it,” Lawson told PlanetF1.com. “I’m focused on having some good races… three of them isn’t enough over 12 races, or however many it’s been. We need to do more of this, and then we’ll see.”
There’s a humility to that, sure, but also a bit of scar tissue. The early-season call to swap him out — a decision made, as the then-Red Bull team boss put it, in Lawson’s best interests — came as his pace and confidence frayed. Back in Faenza, he’s tightened up the execution and raised the baseline. The raw speed is peeking through again, and crucially, the errors have dried up.
Inside Red Bull, the conversation for 2026 is straightforward on paper and notoriously complicated in real life. With succession planning beyond Verstappen a long-running project, the team appears to be homing in on either Hadjar or Lawson for the seat many once assumed would be Tsunoda’s long-term. Hadjar, despite a recent dip, is still seen as the favorite to step up. Lawson, for his part, is making the choice less comfortable by the week.
“It’s been a very tough year,” Lawson admitted. “It’s hard to string together a series of good results in F1, and recently it’s been good for us. But we have another whole second half to go, and we need to learn from what’s working right now and try and take that forward.”
Read between the lines and you get a driver who’s deliberately keeping the horizon close. That’s sensible. The second half of a season has a way of reshuffling pecking orders at Red Bull. For now, the safer bet is Lawson staying put at Racing Bulls, with Arvid Lindblad strongly linked to the other Faenza seat, while Hadjar remains first in line for the senior team.
Of course, if Lawson keeps this form humming, Red Bull won’t need to ask him to think about 2026. They’ll do the thinking for him.
