Liam Lawson has driven the best Formula One race of his career, holding on for sixth place at the Austrian Grand Prix and stretching a run of form that no New Zealand driver has matched in more than half a century. The Pukekohe-raised driver started ninth on the grid at the Red Bull Ring and brought his Racing Bulls home sixth on Sunday, his fourth race in a row scoring championship points.
That streak puts Lawson in company few Kiwis have ever kept. According to Speedcafe, the result makes him the first New Zealander to score points in four consecutive Formula One races since Denny Hulme managed it in 1973. Hulme remains the only New Zealander to win the world drivers’ championship, which he did in 1967, so any comparison with him carries weight in this country.
The race itself was won by Lando Norris, who held off his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri after a long and closely fought afternoon. Charles Leclerc finished third for Ferrari, ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton in fourth and George Russell in fifth for Mercedes. Lawson came home sixth, the only car outside the top five teams to finish on the lead lap, with everyone from his position back having been lapped by the leaders.
It very nearly went wrong before it had properly begun. Reigning champion Max Verstappen was spun out on the opening lap after contact with Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli and retired on the spot, and Lawson was caught up in the same chaos. The 24 year old admitted afterwards he thought his race was finished in those first seconds.
“I don’t know how I survived it to be honest,” Lawson told Formula 1. “I thought, when I saw Kimi coming I was like, okay, this is over.” Having come through unscathed, he then had to make the result count over a punishing afternoon in the Austrian heat, with track temperatures climbing past 50 degrees.
The strategy was the difference. Racing Bulls gambled on a one stop plan, asking Lawson to nurse a set of hard tyres through a long final stint while rivals around him stopped more often. Lawson was not convinced it would hold up, but said the team read the conditions better than he did. “We made the one-stop work which was key for us,” he said. “With the temperatures I wasn’t sure about it, but the team knew.”
The closing laps were a test of nerve as much as pace. Lawson spent much of the race with the experienced Fernando Alonso glued to his gearbox, close enough to use the overtaking aid known as DRS for lap after lap without ever quite finding a way through. “It is always Fernando who is behind, I think he was within DRS for 70 laps today,” Lawson said. “And you try not to make a mistake.” He did not make one, and the points were his.
For Lawson, the finish caps a turnaround that looked unlikely earlier in the season. His 2026 began slowly and questions hung over his place on the grid after a difficult run, but the recent form has changed the conversation entirely. The sixth place was also, by his own account, the first time he had beaten his Racing Bulls teammate Isack Hadjar on race day since returning to the team, a small marker that matters inside any garage.
Lawson was careful not to oversell the change behind the results. “It’s been a very tough year and hard to string a series of good results in one, but recently it has been good for us,” he told reporters. “We need to learn from what is working right now and try to take that forward, but nothing has changed other than some small things in the car, and small things to me, which have helped me get more comfortable.”
The pole position had gone to Russell after a dramatic qualifying session on Saturday in which Verstappen crashed late in his final run, an early sign that the weekend at the Red Bull Ring would be anything but tidy. Lawson’s ninth place start was his fourth top ten grid slot of the year, and converting it into sixth on Sunday was the kind of clean, patient drive that has become his trademark over the past month.
The points also matter in the wider picture. Every finish lifts Racing Bulls in the constructors’ standings, where the midfield fight for prize money and pride is tight, and a driver delivering four straight scores is exactly what a team in that part of the grid needs. For New Zealand fans who have followed Lawson’s long climb through the junior categories and into the sport’s senior ranks, the Hulme comparison is the headline, but the steadiness behind it is the real story.
The Formula One season now rolls on, and Lawson will want to keep the run alive rather than treat Austria as a peak. As the New Zealand Herald and RNZ have both noted through this stretch, the question is no longer whether Lawson belongs in Formula One but how high he can push from here.
What do you make of Liam Lawson’s form and his place alongside Denny Hulme in the record books? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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