‘Pretend that I never even went there’ - Liam Lawson breaks down brutal Red Bull axing

Liam Lawson has revealed what went on at Red Bull during his brief two-race stint in 2025, claiming he 'pretended I never went there' in an act of self-preservation.

In late 2024, Red Bull viewed Lawson as its next big talent, and elected against retaining Sergio Perez or promoting Yuki Tsunoda to partner Max Verstappen, and handed the New Zealander the seat instead.

What followed was a dreadful pair of weekends, with Lawson qualifying in 18th place in Australia before failing to finish, then qualifying last for both the Sprint and Grand Prix in China, and finishing in 12th place, over a minute behind his team-mate.

Citing a lack of preparation for the season with a difficult pre-season test, Lawson told the High Performance Podcast: "In Melbourne, I missed P3 with an engine issue and we’d planned to do two soft tyre runs before quali, so I went into quali with no soft tyre running, and then I made mistakes, and that is where I was unprepared going in, but tried to make up for it and locked up, went off, which I never do. It was just stupid mistakes that I never do.

“Then we went to China and it was a Sprint weekend. I’d never driven there, and it was the same kind of thing, just trying to make up for a lack of preparation and just little mistakes. Last year, if you messed up a corner, the lap was done.

“When it’s more separated, you can get away with little mistakes here and there, especially this year, where you have energy making such a big difference, whereas last year, it was so close and you had to put it all together. I just didn’t do it on either of those weekends, and that was it.

“Then there was the race in China. We’d spoken about trying something quite wild on the car to get some comfort for me, but also because the team at that time collectively weren’t happy with the car at all. Max wasn’t happy. This was not working, and we needed to try something quite radical here.

“So we all had a meeting on Saturday night. I was on board with it because let’s try something quite crazy, but it might help to get a direction for Liam and the team going forward to get the car a bit easier to drive.

“So we decided to start from the pit lane and basically radically change the car – like a change you would never do on a race weekend, a normal change times ten.”

But post-race decisions highlighted the disconnect between driver and team, as Lawson added: "I flew back to the UK for the simulator on the Tuesday or Wednesday, then on the Monday, I got the phone call saying ‘we’re switching you’. I was like, ‘If you’d told me before the race that we were going to run this crazy car for your last race in a Red Bull or we’re going to run the setup that you’ve run all weekend, what do you think I would have said?’

“That at the time was really hard to deal with, but then I had Japan the next week, so I just didn’t have time to compress or think any of this, and I had to go to VCARB and prepare and do the best job possible. But it made that whole experience quite tough.” 

Asked if he carried the effect of the demotion through the season, Lawson said: “I tried not to, but I definitely did. I tried to just, as much as possible…I even pretended like it never even happened, because I spent two races there. And the way it all went down was just so crazy that I just honestly was like, ‘I’m going to pretend that I never even went there’.”

Highlighting his continued feeling that the decision was, in his view, a harsh one, Lawson concluded: “The performance was then used against me, which then, regardless of the two races, whatever – two races on two tracks that I’ve never been to in a season like that, I won’t accept that you can judge me off that. It’s such a team game, so everybody is working together, and that was just obviously not what I felt when that happened.”