For over a year, a convenient narrative has followed Liam Lawson around the F1 paddock. One that claims that the young Kiwi was overwhelmed by the pressure of driving for Red Bull, struggled mentally under the spotlight, and was quietly moved aside after just two races for his own good.
But now, Lawson is pushing back hard.
Reflecting on his brief and turbulent spell alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull at the start of the 2025 season, Lawson insists the version of events that gained traction publicly bears little resemblance to what actually happened behind closed doors.
Speaking candidly on the High Performance podcast, Lawson revealed that the experience was so surreal that his initial reaction was simply to erase it from his mind.
"I tried to [not let it affect me] as much as possible, I even pretended it never even happened," he explained. "I spent two races there, and the way it all went down was just so crazy that I honestly was like, I'm just going to pretend I never even went there."
But while Lawson admits he did not perform at the level he expected, he argues the roots of the problem ran far deeper than simple driver error.
Thrown in at the deep end
Lawson believes a lack of preparation left him fighting an uphill battle from the moment the season began.
"Let me say, firstly, you can always do a better job,” he explained. “So I look at those two races, if I want to reflect on them, and I did at the time, I could have done a better job in some ways.
“But I think just the way we did, really no testing. I did half a day before the season, and even then, our Bahrain testing was very compromised as well. We had some issues, and I just went into the first weekend very unprepared.
"I just kept telling myself that I'll just deal with it, it'll be fine. I think we all back ourselves, but with how close, especially last year, it was so close, if I'm three tenths off Max, I'm out in Q1, pretty much. It's so close."
In a field where fractions of a second determine success or failure, Lawson says he entered the opening races already on the back foot.
Melbourne only compounded the challenge.
"But it was the preparation that I don't think we did a good job at all,” he added. “But then maybe I could have done a better job as well.
“And then Melbourne, I had missed FP3 with an engine issue, which we had 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's where, OK, I was unprepared going in, but I tried to make up for it and locked up, went off, which I never do. It was just stupid mistakes that I never do. Knocked out, and then I'm starting the race at the back.
“Then we went to China, and it was a sprint weekend. I'd never driven there and it was the same kind of thing, trying to just make up for lack of preparation and little mistakes."
By the time Formula 1 arrived in Shanghai, Lawson was still searching for answers. Red Bull, he says, was doing the same.
The China gamble that backfired
According to Lawson, the defining moment of his short Red Bull tenure came during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, when the team opted for an aggressive setup experiment.
The move was not a desperate solo attempt by the driver to save his seat, he says. Instead, it was a collective decision born from wider dissatisfaction with the car's behaviour.
“We had spoken about basically trying something quite wild on the car to get some comfort for me, but also because at the time collectively we weren't happy at all with the car. Max wasn't happy. Everyone was like, 'This is not working, and we need to try something quite radical here’,” he recounted.
"And so we all had a meeting on Saturday night, and it was decided, I was on board with it because the idea was let's try something quite crazy, but it might help get a direction for Liam and for the team going forward to make this car a bit easier to drive.
“We decided, 'OK, let's start from the pitlane and basically radically change a car.' We made a massive change you would never do on a race weekend, like a normal change times 10.
“Trying to get the same balance out of the car, just in a very different way. An easier car to drive, a more stable car to drive. But it's a shot in the dark, and even if it works, the chance of it working over a race was very low.
Read also: Verstappen camp signals imminent call on Red Bull future
“And I knew all of these things, but it was proposed to me as, 'This is going to help you for the future, and this is going to give us a bit more direction. We're going to try this. You're starting last in the race, it's done anyway. Let's just try something, and this will help you.'"
The result was disastrous. Rather than making the car more manageable, the setup destroyed tyre life and left Lawson struggling throughout the race.
"So, I ran it. It sucked for this race. The car was so hard to drive and just killed tyres and destroyed our race."
A convenient but false narrative
Yet Lawson says the disappointing result later became part of the justification for removing him from the seat. After China, Red Bull informed him that he would be replaced and return to Racing Bulls ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.
"This performance [in China] was then used against me, which, regardless of the two races, two races on two tracks I've never been to in a season like that. I won't accept that.
“You can't judge me by that. It's such a team game. Everybody is working together. That was obviously not what I felt when that happened."
For Lawson, the central issue remains the tiny sample size. Two races, both at circuits unfamiliar to him, were simply not enough evidence to make a definitive judgement on his potential.
And perhaps most importantly, he rejects outright the suggestion that Red Bull's decision was motivated by concern for his mental wellbeing.
"The whole thing was played out to be me being mentally struggling and all this stuff, and like they were doing it to protect me," he explained. "That honestly just could not be further from what it was actually like."
It is a striking rebuttal from a driver who has spent the past year rebuilding his reputation.
While Lawson acknowledges mistakes were made on his side, he remains adamant that his abrupt Red Bull exit was the product of circumstances, preparation issues and team decisions—not a lack of mental resilience.
In his view, the story that followed his demotion may have been easy to tell. It just wasn't true.
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